Only HopeBy Gidgetgirl
Chapter Seven
“Oh dear,” Giles said again.“Would you stop saying that?” Angel asked, on edge. “What kind of oh dear are we talking about here?”
Not too far away, Faith and Lindsey were eating dinner in a run down diner, both uncharacteristically quiet. Faith chewed thoughtfully, her mouth welcoming the food after two years of prison gruel even as her stomach rebelled against the thought of eating at all. It had been two years, but she knew that hatred died hard, if ever. She couldn’t exactly imagine the Sunnydale Slayer and Company welcoming her back with open arms, and now there was a complicating dimension to the situation.
“So this kid,” Faith started.
“Hopie,” Lindsey put in, and Faith thought that he was looking particularly nice. Too bad she had sworn off her old use them and discard them policy. Too bad she had decided that she wasn’t worthy of anything else either. Her life was just filled with too bads.
“What kind of name is Hopie?” Faith asked.
“The same kind as Faithie,” Lindsey said quietly, examining the slayer. She looked dark: dark hair, dark eyes, dark shadows behind the eyes. There was something vulnerable about her, but not childlike. Faith hadn’t been childlike even as a child.
“I always hated being called Faithie,” Faith said. “My old man used to call me Faithie, before he took off when I was pint sized. I guess he thought it was cute.” Faith took a swig of milk, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “So this Hopie, she’s some sort of cosmic copy machine that’s made copies of the Buff, Angel, and the popular chic?” Lindsey nodded.
“And Connor,” he added. “He’s her favorite, from what my sources tell me.”
“What kind of sources do you have since you left the old kill-or-torture law firm?” Lindsey didn’t reply, and Faith again fell silent.
“Do they know we’re coming?” she asked finally. Lindsey shook his head.
“Do you really want them to?” he returned her question. She shook her head.
Cordelia paused for a moment, seeing a teenage boy being torn apart by a female vampire. She made mental notes of the details, and went to find Angel, figuring that he could use a break from all of the research work. She stopped in her tracks when she heard a terrified scream.
Buffy stared, bewildered at the small girl who was thrashing wildly in her lap. Hopie screamed. Buffy shook the little girl gently, trying to wake her from her deep sleeping nightmare. Angel heard Hopie’s scream and ran out of the room before Giles could so much as utter another oh dear. Cordelia followed him at a run. In the lobby, Buffy was having no luck waking the screaming child.
“No!” Hopie yelled. “NO NO NO NO NO NO.” She thrashed wildly. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it. You keep it. NO!” It took all of Buffy’s slayer strength to hold the child still.
“Wake up, Hopie,” she begged. “It’s just a dream, sweetie.” Cordelia ran to the child. Hopie continued screaming, her eyes knit shut, caught in her own private hell.
“Hopie, baby, open your eyes,” Cordy said. “Open your eyes for Cordy, baby.” Nothing happened. Angel took the child from Buffy, lifting her into the air and holding her tightly against his shoulder. He put his face next to hers.
“Hopie,” he said softly and then repeated it louder. Nothing happened. Angel was getting worried. He put a little mean into his voice and growled in the back of his throat. “Hope Chase Angel,” he growled at her. Hopie’s eyes flew open and she screamed when she saw Angel. She struggled to get away from him, sobbing.
“It’s alright, baby,” he said in the softest, gentlest voice any of them had ever heard.
“Momma,” Hopie sobbed reaching for Cordy. Cordy’s eyes flew open in surprise as she took the child.
“Shhhh…” she shushed the child gently, holding her tight and walking with her. Hopie buried her head in Cordy’s shoulder.
“That must have been some dream,” Willow said, having followed Giles and Angel out of the research room.
“It might have been a vision,” Angel commented, shooting a questioning look at Cordelia. She didn’t notice, because all of her attention was wrapped up in the small, hiccupping child in her arms.
“Shhh, baby, it’s okay.” Cordy swayed gently. “Cordy’s here. Momma’s here, baby. Momma’s here.” Hopie looked at her, her eyes brimming with tears. She had lost her mommy a few months before, but the words she had spoken in panic were true. Cordy was Momma now.
“I didn’t want it,” Hopie whimpered. “They tried to make me take it but I didn’t want it. It was ugly and black and mean and I didn’t want it.” Cordy murmured, thinking the girl was speaking nonsense.
“Oh dear,” said Giles. Angel shot him a death look. “If I’m correct, I think a significant player might have just crossed into another dimension.”
“And from the ugly and mean talk, I’m guessing this wasn’t of the nice and herolike school of players?” Willow asked.
“I didn’t take it,” Hopie said stubbornly. “I didn’t want it.”
“What do you mean, baby?” Cordy asked. Hopie shrugged.
“That’s not me,” she said. “Not like the others.”
Giles cleaned his glasses thoughtfully. “Perhaps she refused to allow the essence to be tied into her soul. Perhaps her will is strong enough tied to your essences that she refused it. She’s a child, far too pure to accept complete darkness. Of course this is all just postulation on my part.”
“Postulate away,” Cordy said, holding the little girl tightly. “But figure out something, because whoever that was trying to get into my little girl is about to get with the dead, and quickly.” Her eyes flashed. Hopie’s hand stroked Cordelia’s face gently.
“So what was the earlier series of ‘oh dears’ for?” Angel asked Giles.
Giles shrugged. “I was retranslating the pieces of the Niazean Scrolls that dealt with the Shanshu prophesies. I’m afraid Wesley’s earlier job was a bit shoddy. You see, he overlooked the secondary calligraphic style and, well, to make a long story short, what he read as “the vampire with a soul will become human, Shanshu will return his humanity” didn’t say that precisely.”
If Angel had had a heart it would have stopped beating. “What does it say?” he asked quietly.
“The first part says that the essence of the vampire with a soul will become human. That has already happened. Your essence, in Hopie, is human. The second part is a bit more vague, but it roughly translates that that human essence will give you your humanity. In the other translation, this seemed a bit repetitive, but with the newer one…” Giles trailed off.
“It means that Hopie will give me humanity,” Angel finished. He looked at Giles and knew the rest. “But that doesn’t mean that I will become completely human.” Everyone was completely confused.
“Humanity,” Giles explained, “is the set of unique qualities that make us human, say, for instance, the human soul. A human soul has no conditions, it simply is, and no matter what mistakes are made, as long as the person retains their humanity, they retain their soul.” Buffy understood the bottom line. Eventually, Hopie would give Angel his humanity: not a human life span, but a human soul, which nothing and no one could take away.
“Uncle Angel was all grrrr,” said Hopie quietly, looking at Angel intensely from Cordy’s arms. “He was leaving and he was grrrrr and mean and it wasn’t Uncle Angel but it was him. I didn’t take it. NO!” Hopie started screaming again in memory. Buffy was the first to understand.
“Angelous,” she said. “Hopie saw or felt or whatever it is she does, Angelous.”
“How could she?” Angel asked. “I’m standing right here and look, no grrrr.” Hopie looked and believed him, despite what she had seen.
“Then that means that somehow, someone must have been trying to trick Hopie’s magic into copying Angelous into her essence. When you went to hell, you were Angel, not Angelous. Hopie adopted those qualities, that destiny. Someone is trying to take that back, or at the very least neutralize it before Hopie can make good with the Shanshu-soul business.” Willow said all of this is one breath. Understanding was slowly dawning on everyone.
“But how could they trick that kind of magic?” Giles asked out loud. “It’s impossible. If Hopie hadn’t refused it with the strength of her will…” his voice trailed off.
“Maybe they didn’t trick it,” Angel said. “Maybe someone, and I’ll give you two guesses as to who, managed to bring my past self here, just long enough to deport it back across time and get that side of possibility copied into Hopie as well.”
“Only she refused it,” Cordy wondered at the little girl’s strength. “Not to rain on this musing parade, but I did have a vision before. Vamp, just after sunset, boy with the blood and ick.” Hopie nodded.
“That’s what I dreamed about before the bad dream,” she said. “That and ponies.” Hopie smiled fondly at the memory. This kind of monster, she could handle. “I get to go tonight,” she reminded them. “Buffy promised.” At that moment, Buffy remembered that she had.
“It’s almost sunset,” she said. She grabbed weapons and handed Hopie a stake to put in her sleeve. She looked the little girl straight in the eye. “You can come, but you stay with me and you do what I say, deal?”
Hopie nodded. “Deal, but…” she made with the cutesy eyes. “Can I have a crossbow too?” Angel handed her a crossbow. Cordelia set the squirming child down.
“Be a good girl for Buffy and we can watch a movie when you get home,” she told her.
“The Little Mermaid?” Hopie asked. It was one of her favorites. Secretly, she liked Star Wars and Rambo better, but Aunt Cordy wasn’t supposed to know that Angel let her watch the fight scenes. For once, Hopie was being a good secret keeper.
“Sure, baby,” Cordy replied smiling.
“Momma?” Hopie asked hesitantly.
“Yes, baby?” Cordy replied naturally. Hopie smiled.
“Promise you won’t let Uncle Angel sing along with Ariel this time.” Everyone laughed except for Angel who ducked his head, embarrassed.
Buffy set off with Hopie, Spike, Dawn, and Connor, the last three finally having shown up to see what all of the screaming was about. Buffy so didn’t want to know what Connor and Dawn had been doing.
Faith and Lindsey left the diner and headed towards the hotel, detouring slightly because Faith was ready for some slay action after her prison sabbatical. Secretly, she was trying to delay the inevitable. They stumbled into a nest of vamps, and it wasn’t until she had already staked one that she realized that she and Lindsey weren’t alone. The time for the inevitable was now.