Le Bella

By Gidgetgirl

Chapter Five

Hopie ran her little fingers lovingly across the crossbow. It wasn’t loaded, because Momma and Daddy tended to get very cross when she played with loaded weapons inside moving vehicles. She thought about kindergarten.

“Grrrr. Arrrrg,” she said out loud, giggling. “Today we made sounds like dinosaurs, only nobody but me knew that they were really demon sounds, and hopscotch is dumb, but boys are dumber, and my teacher likes my pretty dress. Grr. Arrrg.” Like most small children, Hopie was a master of the run on sentence.

Lindsey smiled at her, agreeing silently that boys that age were dumb. Apparently, Angel and Connor agreed.

“Boys are dumb,” Angel said, from underneath his blanket. “You should stay away from them. Forever, or at least until you’re thirty.” Connor nodded enthusiastically.

“I’m not dumb, right Hopie?” he asked playfully. She paused for a long moment.

“Well…” the child said thoughtfully. “You’re not AS dumb as most of the little boys, but you get all goofy around Dawnie, and then you look like a ‘luv sick little nipper.’” Everyone recognized the quote from Lorne. Connor seethed quietly, and Angel laughed from underneath the blanket.

“I wouldn’t be laughing at me if I were you,” Connor retorted. “I don’t think it’s the kind of behavior rubber ducky would approve of.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Angel replied in a serious, macho tone.

Lindsey tickled Hopie, knowing that the long car ride would tax the child’s attention span past its limits if he didn’t intervene. “Grrr. Arrrg.” Hopie clapped joyfully.

“Uncle Lindsey made monster sounds! You better slay him, Aunt Faith!” she cried out in a loud voice. Cordelia, Angel, and Connor choked on their laughter.

“Oh yes, Aunt Faith,” Wesley said in a wry voice, trying to take his mind off of Anni’s situation, “Please slay him.”

Hopie poked Wesley in the ribs. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked. He shook his head. Hopie looked at him strangely for a moment. “Why do you feel sad?” she asked him. “Are you worried that none of the other kids will play with you in Sunnydale?” The thought hadn’t even occurred to Wes. “Because I can tell you a secret to get them to play with you.”

Wesley smiled down at the little sweetheart. “No, Hopie, I’m not worried that the other kids won’t play with me. I’m worried about Anni, my little sister.”

“You have a sister?” the child asked, delighted. “Is she my age?”

“No, she’s several years older, though you wouldn’t know it based on her actions.” Hopie recognized the very adult somebody-is-going-to-be-in-big-trouble voice. She hoped that Wesley’s little sister was good at making innocent eyes.

“Are you mad at her?” the child asked, wide eyed. Wesley nodded.

“Hopie, I don’t think Wes wants to talk about this anymore,” Cordelia put in from the front seat.

“What are you going to do?” Hopie asked. “Are you going to yell at her?”

“Hopie,” Angel warned from underneath his blanket. Hopie shrugged, letting the topic slide.

“So, Wes,” Cordelia said. “What are you going to do when you find her?” Wesley sighed.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “She was only Hopie’s age when I left home. I should hardly know her, but I look at her, and I can still see the four year old little girl with bright eyes getting into everything she knew she wasn’t supposed to.”

“She was a handful?” Faith asked, liking the girl already.

Wes nodded. “Every time I came back from school, she would have outwitted the latest nanny. My parents seldom noticed, so long as she finished her translations and her tutor reported steady progress.”

“Translations? At four?” Lindsey asked, remembering that Wes came from old Watcher stock. He nodded.

“She was, is I imagine, quite brilliant.” A little light finally went off in Hopie’s head.

“Bella!” she said. “Bella is your sister.” No one knew how the child had made the connection.

“You feel sad like she does when you think about her,” Hopie replied seriously to the unspoken question. “Don’t be mad at her, Wes, or I’ll be mad at you! She’s good, just sad.” Wes grinned at the child, still planning on letting Anni have it when they found her. Hopie stuck out her bottom lip and gave Wes a disgruntled look.

“Cordelia, your child is glaring at me,” Wesley said.

“Hopie, stop glaring at Wesley.”

“Tattletale,” they heard from underneath the blanket.

“Angel!” Cordelia said, laughing.

“Oh, go talk to a muppet,” Wes responded.

Anni collapsed by the side of the road. She’d never done two relocating spells in one day before, and making the glamour last for several hours had been exhausting. As she sat down, her hands started shaking. She wondered if she should return to the slayer’s house. Surely Buffy wouldn’t begrudge her some food. She looked up and saw a red-haired woman walking toward her.

The girl sat down beside her. “You shouldn’t go into a spell like that on a whim,” Willow told the strange girl. “Magic feeds off of your essence, and without proper preparation, it can drain your life force.”

Anni stared at the stranger, trying to remember all she knew about those forces who resided in Sunnydale. “Willow?” she asked, recalling all she had heard in the past year about the Wicca who had almost destroyed the world. The girl nodded.

Willow took her hand, and allowed some energy to flow from her body into the girl’s. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Anni,” the girl replied. “Bella. Either/or.” Willow nodded.

“You’re the girl, the one who came to see Buffy earlier?” Anni nodded. “Don’t you just hate those Council guys?” Willow asked. “Cause I do, except for Giles.”

“They’re not all so bad,” Anni replied, thinking of all of the people who she had grown up around. “But most of them are.”

When Cordelia saw Willow talking to Anni on the side of the road, she just couldn’t believe their luck. Wes was out of the car before it had even stopped. Anni saw him and took a deep breath, more than willing to relocate again.

“Stop,” Willow said, grabbing the girl’s hand while she cancelled the spell. “You’re not ready to do that spell again yet.” Recognizing the man, she opened her eyes widely. “Wesley?” she asked. It sort of looked like Wes, in a broad-shouldered, not-wearing-tweed-or-funny-glasses kind of way.

“Willow,” Wesley said, barely nodding at her before he crushed Anni against him in a tight embrace. Anni, for a moment forgetting why she had run, enjoyed the hug, feeling safe, if only for an instant.

“Are you all right?” he asked her seriously. She nodded, attempting to back away from the anger she saw in his face. He held tightly onto her arm, giving it a good shake.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Wesley exploded. Hopie frowned vigorously at him from inside the car, trying to get the door opened so she could go save her new friend. “Like it or not, you’re twelve, Anni, twelve! Running around isn’t safe for young girls, not in LA and not here.”

“Let go of me,” Anni cried. Wes brought his face close to hers.

“Let go of you? I think not.” His voice was so dangerously low that Willow shivered, feeling like she shouldn’t be listening to this conversation. At the same time, she was afraid to leave for fear that Anni would try to relocate again. Sure enough, the child was focusing her concentration on the spell. With a wave of her hand, Willow cancelled it.

“You could have been killed, Anni. Killed! I ought to kill you myself.” Anni tried desperately to relocate. Willow cancelled the spell again. “What is going on with you?” he asked his sister. “I want to know, and I want to know now, and if you have any sense at all, you won’t give me a reason to make this a day you will remember for a very, very long time.”

Anni jerked out of his grasp. “Leave me alone!” she yelled. She turned her glare at Willow. “Both of you just leave me alone.” She tried to run away, still attempting the relocating spell. Instantly, Wes’s hand was on her shoulder.

“Anni luv,” he said in a very serious tone, “if you don’t stop trying to cast whatever spell it is that Willow keeps canceling or if you so much as take one more step or do ANYTHING that’s not telling me what the hell is going on, so I help me, I’ll take you over my knee here and now, and you’ll rue the day you were born.”

“You wouldn’t,” Anni replied, frozen in place at Wes’s threat.

“Try me.” His voice was low and true, and she took him very, very seriously. Willow looked around, trying to find anything to look at that wasn’t the drama playing before her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Wes asked, more gently, his voice still firm enough that she knew that the threat stood.

“Like you even care. Like you’ve ever cared. You left me there. You knew what it was like, and you just left me there. You never came back, not once!” The girl’s anger took him by surprise.

“Anni,” he said softly. She didn’t stop screaming.

“You know them, Wes. You know what it was like, never getting to be a kid, never having friends, but you came scurrying off to America like a good little Watcher-boy, leaving me all alone. And then you failed, and that made it fifty times worse, and now I will NOT do what they want me to do. I won’t! I don’t care what you do to me, I won’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Wes asked her, truly mystified. She wouldn’t be old enough for the Watcher’s Academy for four more years, even as advanced as she was. What were his parents trying to make her do?

“What the HELL do you think I’m talking about? One guess as to what they want me to be. You were the watcher. And then the Council comes to them, making all nicelike for the first time in YEARS, and they were so damn happy!” Her brother was still shooting her a clueless look. “You do the math, Wes. Take a wild guess here.”

“The Slayer,” he said, seeing the truth in her eyes, finally. “You’ve been identified as a Slayer-in-Waiting, and mother and father signed your life over to the Council.” Anni nodded, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Anni, sweetie, why didn’t you tell me?” Wes pulled his sister close, still angry at her actions, but his heart absolutely aching for her pain, her loneliness.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Anni scoffed. “You’d already made up your mind. I had to leave. I have to leave.” Wes shook his head.

“The promise still stands, Anni,” he said, clearly referring to his earlier threat. “You can’t keep running from this. I’ll help you, but you’ve got to let me.”

“I’ll help too,” Willow offered awkwardly. “We all will. Buffy already said she’d help, and if you haven’t noticed, we’re not too much with the Watcher-loving here, no offense, Wes.”

“None taken,” Wesley said, and Willow thought again how much he’d changed in such a short period of time. He looked… rougher somehow, stronger, and not at all like the pompous Watcher who had left Sunnydale four years earlier.

The rest of the crew, sensing the worst of the familial argument was over, exited the car, Hopie running straight up to Wes and kicking him hard in the leg. Wes doubled over in pain.

“Hope Chase Angel!” Cordelia and Faith said simultaneously. From underneath his blanket, Angel could be heard echoing the same sentiment. Faith, despite her words, was struggling not to laugh because, try as she might, she still invariably pictured Wes as the stuffy Watcher the Council had stuck her with. Wes rubbed his shin. The child had a powerful kick for someone so small.

“I didn’t kick him hard,” Hopie explained, “and he made Bella cry!” Anni self-consciously wiped the tears from her face, smiling at the little girl.

“Are you all right Wes?” Cordelia asked.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, refusing to believe that his leg was throbbing as the result of the pint sized terror in front of him.

“You’re lucky she didn’t break anything,” Lindsey said, having seen the Shanshu child in battle before. “That kick wasn’t even at quarter force.”

Willow watched all of this, amused by the little girl they had all grown to love during their last stay at the Hyperion. She sent a tentative smile towards Faith and Lindsey, well recognizing the continuing fluffy eyed phenomena between the two of them.

“Hopie,” Anni said softly, feeling a little guilty that she was secretly relishing the child’s actions, “I’m okay. Thank you.” Hopie responded by lifting her arms up to the girl, and Anni picked her up.

All of them stared at the two girls, one clearly a child, the other on the edge of growing up, both with destinies and responsibilities too heavy for their small shoulders. Hopie’s black hair and Anni’s brown hair lifted as a breeze started through, and the children clung to each other as if they were holding on for dear life.

Hopie put her hands on Anni’s face, gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” she promised. “Never, ever again.” Anni smiled at the child, feeling, more than ever, caught in the middle of something she shouldn’t understand.

“Do you guys maybe want to continue this at Buffy’s house? I know Dawn will want to see Connor, and this whole standing-in-the-middle-of-the-road thing can only work for so long before some car comes and makes big with the smushing and the crashing and the honking.” Willow let go of her magical hold on Anni, keeping her senses sharp, but knowing innately that the older girl would do nothing while she was holding Hopie.

“Besides,” Faith said, cracking a smile, “I think Angel’s getting a little bored underneath that blanket, and I for one don’t want to be here to hear Rubber Ducky Reprise.” Even Hopie giggled, but Anni and Willow were completely mystified. Wes, overcome with the desire to pick his sister up and hold her as she was currently holding Hopie, resigned himself to standing as close to her as was humanly possible, promising himself that he would die before he let anyone or anything hurt her again. Even if it meant standing up to the Watcher’s Council, Anni would have the life she deserved.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he told her gently. “The stunt you pulled, what’s going on at home, any of it.” Anni groaned. Wes had always been a long winded lecturer, and she desperately hoped that he didn’t have anything else in store for her.

“Would you like to see my crossbow?” Hopie asked Wesley for the second time that day.

“I’ve already seen it,” Wes told the child distractedly.

“I know,” Hopie replied seriously. “Would you like to see it up close?” The threat in the tiny child’s voice was unmistakably. “Because that could be arranged.” She sounded so much like Angel when he was making a threat, that everyone had to cough to prevent themselves from dissolving into laughter. Anni hugged the child a little closer, somehow feeling as if she, too, had a Champion.

 

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