Little Bitty Puzzle PiecesBy PJzallday
Resonate
"You sure this is the right place?" John asked the driver as he held out the business card.
"Yep. If that's the address."
John sighed, "Right then," and paid the cabbie.
It was late when the Greyhound had pulled into the station, later still when the desperate figure peered out from the backseat of the taxi at the Hyperion Hotel, but he rationalized that it was probably early for the vampire. With a gulp and a mental note that Angel "helped the helpless", he didn't eat them, John climbed out of the car and took what seemed to him a long walk up to the front entrance. As he reached for the door, part of him prayed it would be locked, but it yielded easily to his pull. Hesitantly, he stepped inside.
The lights were on and the place appeared to be just as one would imagine a hotel lobby of the era. Perhaps Angel Investigations merely rented space and the hotel was still open to travelers so he'd be able to rent a room for the night.
As John scanned the vast space, a reed-thin woman suddenly appeared from behind the front desk carrying a small plate heaped to overflowing with snacks. Seeing John, she startled sending half of the nibbles to the floor and her scrambling down after them.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you," the man exclaimed as he rushed to assist with the clean up.
"No. No. That's alright," the young woman replied with an accent which, to John, seemed as out of place in sunny California as did his own. "I'm always doing things like that. When I go to the fridge I never intend to take out so much, but I see something sweet or something spicy and I just can't help myself so I just pile it on. I guess my eyes are just bigger than my-"
"Your plate?" John offered with a smirk.
The slight woman blushed and smiled nervously. Clamouring to her feet with a hand over the messy pile of recovered goodies, she asked, "Can I… Can I help you?"
Here it was: the moment of truth. "I… ah… was lookin' for Angel," he stated shyly. "Is 'e about?"
The woman seemed dismayed: her eyes widening and brow furling. She swallowed hard before she spoke. "Um… no. He's… he's not here just now." She was doing a poor job of hiding her discomfort.
"Is 'e out helping the helpless then?" asked John with a bit of relief.
"Well… no." She shuffled her feet as she dropped her gaze to admire her fuzzy slippers.
The woman's behaviour had John wondering if the girl thought him a bill collector or something — or perhaps it was simply that he'd caught her in her pajamas. "We're… ah… old friends," he explained, hoping to put the woman's concerns to rest.
"Oh, where are my manners?" she blurted, causing John to feel that she'd effectively averted answering the question. Awkwardly, she put her plate down on the counter, wiped her hand off on her robe then offered it. "My name's Winifred Burkle," she began then she dipped her head a bit and added bashfully, "Fred. Pretty much everybody calls me 'Fred'. And you are?"
Briefly he took her hand. "Call me 'John'."
"Well… John…" Instead of easing, her demeanour seemed to further shift back to discomfort as she began to stammer, "I… I don't… I'm afraid that… Um…"
"Fred?" A tall lean black man appeared on the stairs. He looked tough and suspicious of what the intruder was after. "You alright?"
"Yes Charles," she assured. "Well… um… This is John ah…"
"John Smith," he added, moving toward the other man and extending a hand.
The tall man stepped up. "Charles Gunn," he replied guardedly. Looking at his watch as he gave John's hand a firm shake, he noted, "It's… ah… kind of a weird time for-"
The fidgety woman's eyes popped as she interrupted, "John's a friend of… Angel's." She'd hesitated, but why? Did she not believe him?
"Oh." Gunn stood with a brow furrowed in concern as he looked to Fred, and in a lowered voice asked, "Does he… know about Angel?"
"That he's a vampire?" John chimed in cheerfully in an exaggerated stage-whisper. He nodded and confirmed, "Course."
But that didn't seem to help matters. Charles stepped closer to Fred and assumed a defensive, even possessive stance. "You're not…?"
A vampire? The implication was obvious to the visitor. "No."
Though some of their tension eased, the other two were still troubled.
"About Angel… Actually, 'was' would be a better term," drawled the young woman.
John was baffled. Had Angel been captured by the government too and made human again? "Afraid I'm not following."
"He died," she almost cried.
Gunn added, "About two weeks ago."
John was stunned. He couldn't figure what to say; all that came out of his mouth was a choked, "How?"
"Oh dear. I can see you weren't prepared for this — well who's ever prepared for the death of a friend. It came as a huge shock to me and-"
"Hey," Charles interrupted, "You should si' down." He motioned the visitor to the couch.
"How?" John repeated more forcefully. "How'd he… How did he die?"
"The way I heard it, he was in a club, and a buncha Slayers burst in and started killin' up the place," Gunn grumbled.
"Slayers…" John paled. He stumbled to his feet then toward the door. "I've gotta go," he mumbled.
"Hey, whoa. Hold up," insisted Gunn. "What's the problem?"
"Isn't it obvious, Charles?" Fred wandered over to coax the distraught man back to the couch. "He's upset about his friend."
It didn't matter that Angel was a "good guy". "Slayers killed him?" John was in shock; he felt sick.
"Well, it was kind of an accident, I guess," Fred explained. "They didn't actually know that Angel was… well, Angel. They just thought he was some ordinary vampire and they caught him by surprise before he had the chance to tell them who is… er… um… was. Yeah, so um… they didn't know who he was." Her tone suggested to John that she was trying to convince herself as much as him that the slaying had in fact been an accident.
"But they know who I was," John whimpered quietly.
"Huh?" Gunn looked to other man to repeat what he'd said.
Instead, John blurted, "They're after me." He leapt to his feet and muttered, "Not safe. I have to go."
"Hey man, take it easy," the other guy insisted.
"Is that why you came looking for Angel?" Fred asked. "Because somebody's after you?"
***
Sitting down to a late morning tea-break, Giles remarked to Dawn, "We've been struggling. I've not wanted to say too much in front of the girls but... As you know, we did locate some Field Watchers who'd not been killed, but we've simply not got the necessary numbers to deal with all the Slayers. At best, I've managed to provide one regional Watcher to every dozen odd Slayers and even then some of them aren't able to devote their time exclusively, as a good deal of that time is spent travelling from Slayer to Slayer. We're trying to train more — some of the retired Council members have volunteered to provide some tutelage — but we've had recruitment issues." He sighed with discouragement. "Dawn, is there any chance you could stay on in the new year? You could finish your studies here and… Well, you're better qualified than some of the old gits.""I don't know, Giles," the teen replied apprehensively. "I'm still in high school."
"Dawn, you've a wealth of knowledge and real world experience that people twice your age could never even imagine. What does it matter that you don't have a piece of paper from some third-rate California high school?"
"Well, Buffy wants-"
The man bristled and snapped, "You can't keep living your life based on what Buffy wants. Humanity is at stake and we've the responsibility to protect it. You could have your own part of that! You wouldn't have to live in Buffy's shadow."
"Yeah, I get that Giles, but I… I'm in an awkward position. I wanna be able to help you but she's my sister," the girl implored. "I know some of what's been going on between you two the past year and it just seems like I'd be betraying Buffy if I stayed here with you."
"Dawn, this isn't about Buffy." He casually removed his glasses and pulled a cleaning cloth from his pocket. As he buffed his lenses, he declared, "It's about duty." Eerily cool and calm, the man paused again to replace his glasses then said, "There was a time when saving you was all that mattered to Buffy. She gave her life to save the world and you with it." He took a slow sip of tea, as if allowing that bit of information to be raised to the forefront in Dawn's psyche. With a raised brow, he asked in a somewhat rhetorical fashion, "Don't you think you owe it to yourself- to Buffy to continue to do as she would have wanted? …what she'd be doing now had she not… lost her way? Don't you think you've a responsibility to protect her world using your own skills?"
***
"We'll put you in Angel's room. Maybe being around some of his things will help you remember him," Fred suggested as the three climbed the stairs. "Besides, it's the only room I know is clean. I went kinda crazy dusting and polishing," the bubbly woman confessed, "after Angel… Well, I know the bed's been made and the bathroom's sparkling and the room's tidy."She and Gunn had managed to calm the visitor a bit and when John admitted he had no place to go, Fred insisted he stay at the Hotel and that he'd be safe there. When he said he'd fled without going home, Fred deduced he had nothing but the clothes he was wearing, so she made a note to gather some things for him for the time being. When John confessed he didn't know who he was, Gunn groaned that it was too late and they were all too tired to deal with such a big problem that night, then insisted they find John a room fast.
"Well, here we are," she announced as they approached the door.
"You got everything under control here, Fred?" asked Gunn. "I'm gonna go lock up."
"Sure Charles. Night."
"Yeah. Right then. Good night," John said, nodding to the other man before turning his eyes back to the door.
He wasn't sure what to expect of the living quarters of a vampire. Would there be a coffin inside? Would the windows all be boarded up? Had Fred made such a point of cleaning because there were blood stains on the tile? As she opened the door, John gulped with impulsive trepidation. After she wandered in and began to rummage in the armoire, he simply poked his head in to scan the room. It looked perfectly normal, so he cautiously stepped inside. Still seemed normal, but John was far from comfortable in the space; perhaps the ghosts of their shared past were lurking in the shadows making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Slowly, he crept around the room until he felt drawn to a low bookshelf. Crouching beside it, he scanned the titles of the old volumes until his eyes settled on a spiral bound book at the end. He pulled it out and stood up to flip through it.
"I found you some pajamas and a toothbrush," the woman said. "They might be a little big — the pajamas I mean. Toothbrushes are all pretty much the same size-" She stopped when she saw him holding Angel's sketchbook. Quickly she moved to drop the clothes onto a chair then went to John's side. Possessively, she took the book from his hands. "Here, let me."
As she began to flip through the pages, John was amazed and dismayed by some of the images. "D' Angel draw these?"
Fred nodded.
"He's… ah… very good. The pictures are really vivid."
"Yeah. He was." She smiled and turned another page.
"Oh… god…" John blurted in a hushed whisper. There she was: the woman in his dreams, right on paper in black and white. "I think… I killed her," he choked out. Suddenly, his head began to spin, things went dark then he dropped to the floor, unconscious.