Only HopeBy Gidgetgirl
Chapter Five
Everyone stared at Buffy when the words came out of her mouth.“Uncle Angel,” Hopie said, breaking the silence, “What was it like in Hell? Was it hot?” Connor’s eyes darkened as the mention of a hell dimension hit a little too close to home.
“At times,” Angel replied, and even the four year old was able to ascertain that further questioning along those lines would make Uncle Angel go all broody on the inside and all grrr on the outside. Hopie closed her mouth, shifting her weight restlessly from one foot to another. She was ready for another game of battle with Mr. Spike, who everyone had forgotten was still tied to the chair. Silly vampire, Hopie thought.
Giles rubbed his chin. “So if Hopie was born in the exact instant when you sent Angel to hell,” Giles mused, “then maybe she somehow obtained his essence as he left this plane, but that still doesn’t explain why she still has it, or yours or Cordelia’s for that matter, or Connor’s.” At a look from Hopie, Giles sighed. “Your Connor,” he told the little girl. To Buffy he sounded very much like he always had when she’d made him exasperated with her teenage antics. Buffy decided that that wasn’t very flattering.
“Uh, not meaning to sound stupid here, but how do we know she’s part Cordelia or Connor?” Xander voiced the question Cordelia had been anticipating him asking. She was a bit miffed, but not surprised.
Hopie stared at Xander. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk,” she said seriously. Everyone laughed.
“She’s definitely part Cordelia,” Xander said, just as Cordelia told Hopie to apologize to Xander. His eyes flew open when he realized that Cordy had changed, at least in some ways.
“Sorry,” Hopie mumbled, but it was clear from the look on her face that she stood by her Xander-in-silence opinion.
“Oh how funny,” Anya said. “The little child thinks that Xander is not bright!” Anya smiled. “And she likes money,” she reiterated for the third time, smiling.
“Excuse me, hate to interrupt this fun fest, but could someone bloody well UNTIE ME?!” Hopie sighed and untied Mr. Spike.
“You can talk,” she told him sweetly after the last ropes where on the floor.
“Thanks, half-bit,” Spike said, amused despite himself that she was letting him talk and not the whelp. He almost smiled until he saw the way that Angel’s son was looking at Dawn. Spike shuddered. Bitty-Buffy and Angel Junior, now that was a horrifying thought. Dawn played with the ends of her hair. Spike groaned, immediately recognizing her patented flirty motion.
Cordelia stared blankly into space for a few moments, and only Connor and Angel realized that she was having a vision. Spike noticed the half-bit mimicking Cordy, and he smiled despite himself.
“What did you see?” Angel asked.
“A girl,” Cordelia replied, “about nineteen, brown hair, being attacked by a scaly freaky demon.”
As opposed to those non-freaky scaly demons, Xander though, but he didn’t say it out loud.
“Park Street,” Cordelia continued. “Next to the…” the vision started blanking out. “I want to say next to the candy store.”
“Ice Cream Parlor,” Hopie corrected in a sing song voice. No one looked at her.
Gunn, Fred, and Lorne walked into the room in time to hear the tale end of Cordy’s vision. “We’re on it,” Gunn said.
“Speak for yourself,” said Lorne. “I’m keeping my beautiful green self right here in the hotel.”
“I’ll go,” volunteered Xander, anxious to redeem himself.
“Me too,” said Connor.
“I’m in,” said Dawn, looking at Connor. He smiled at her.
“If you’re going, maybe I should go,” Buffy said to Dawn. Hopie shook her head.
“It’s just a little demon,” she said. “By the ice cream store.” Everyone ignored the child.
“I wanna go!” Hopie declared.
“No,” every single person in the room except for Spike said at once.
Hopie crossed her hands over her chest stubbornly. “I wanna go, and it’s not a big demon, and how come Dawn gets to go and I don’t and IT’S AN ICE CREAM PARLOR!” Hopie stamped her foot, on the verge of a tantrum.
“She’s right,” Cordelia realized. “It is an ice cream parlor.” She looked at Hopie. “Honey, how did you know that?”
“I saw it, can I go pleeeeeease?” Hopie asked. Cordelia shot Xander a triumphant look. Hopie had her visions, so there.
“I’ll go and watch out for the Bit and the Half-Bit,” Spike volunteered. Hopie looked at him like he was a god among men, er, vampires.
Cordelia shook her head. “Wn need you here, Hopie,” she explained. “I think you should sing a song for Lorne.” Hopie, seeing the resolve look on Cordy’s face, pouted, not saying a word.
“Be back in a little while, Hopie,” Connor said, giving her a hug. She wouldn’t look at him, angry that he was leaving her to go with Dawn, but she returned the hug anyway because he was her Connor.
Connor, Gunn, Dawn, Spike, and Xander left the others with a very cranky, very powerful little girl who most definitely was NOT going to sing for Lorne, no matter how much they tried to convince her to.
“Come on, baby girl, sing a song for your buddy Lorne,” Lorne said, flashing the little girl a thousand watt smile.
“No,” Hopie said, a mutinous look on her face. Cordelia and Angel recognized the look. They both groaned out loud.
Giles squatted down to the little girl’s level. “You want to help fight the bad guys, don’t you Hopie?” Hopie nodded, her upper lip jutting out. “Well, we need you to sing so that we can fight them,” Giles said, shooting the others a see-how-adults-handle-things look.
“Why don’t YOU sing,” Hopie said grumpily, “and I’ll fight the demons.” Cordelia tried very hard not to laugh as Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt.
Buffy decided to give it a try. “Aunt Cordy and Uncle Angel will sing if you will,” she said, volunteering the others. Now it was Willow’s turn to try not to laugh. Hopie looked very thoughtful.
“Will you?” she asked Buffy cautiously.
“Will I what?” Buffy returned.
“Sing,” Hopie said stubbornly. “You have to sing too, AND play battle with me AND let me go out with you tonight to fight with the big kid weapons.”
“Hope,” Angel warned in a low voice, letting the child know she was pushing the line.
“What?” Hopie mumbled, her hands still crossed firmly over her chest. Angel narrowed his eyes at her. She ignored him.
“Deal,” Buffy said. Giles raised his eyebrows at her.
“What?” Buffy mumbled, crossing her hands over her chest.
Lorne took a deep breath. He’d heard Angel and Cordy sing before, and he’d heard tell of the slayer’s song debut from a fellow named Sweet in Las Vegas. This was going to be something. Not something musical, granted, but something nonetheless. “What song, my little dumplings?” he asked. All three of them glared at him. They huddled briefly.
Buffy stuck her head out of the huddle. “We need a fourth,” she said, looking at Willow and Giles.
“No way,” said Willow, “you know how scared I am of singing in front of people. If I get that scared, for all I know something might just go Kaboom and then Poof… and that would be bad.”
“KABOOM!” yelled Hopie, already in a much better mood.
“Indoor voice, Hopie,” reminded Cordelia.
“Poof,” Hopie said in her indoor voice.
Buffy looked pleadingly at Giles. “Bloody hell, all right.” The four of them huddled and Giles made an indignant snort when he heard their choice of songs. Moments later, Hopie was clapping her hands with joy while Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, and Giles sang the Spice Girls. Willow’s mouth dropped open, and she couldn’t for her life shut it. Lorne looked appalled.
“If you wanna be my lover,” Buffy sang, “you’ve got to get with my friends.” She looked at Angel. Already done, she thought ironically.
“Make it last forever ‘cause friendship never ends,” Giles belted out in a surprisingly good voice.
Cordy looked at Angel. “If you wanna be my lover, you have got to give.” Angel returned her look.
“Taking is to easy and that’s the way it i-is,” he replied.
“Enough!” Lorne cried screaming. “For the love of all things good and nice and fluffy stop this madness!” They all stopped singing. For a moment there was complete silence. Lorne tried to clear all of the emotions out of his head. What a group, he thought.
“Your turn, Hopie,” Willow said softly, giggling all the while. Wait until she told Xander. Anya looked confused. Hopie nodded. She could sing better than that, she thought.
She sang a song her mom had taught her when she was little.
Somewhere, out there
Under the big blue sky
Someone’s thinking of me…
Her little voice trembled a little with thoughts of her mommy and daddy. She finished the song. Tears filled Cordelia’s eyes as she thought about Hopie’s real parents, so very far away from their little girl, forever. Angel sniffled too. Buffy thought about Joyce, and Anya thought that the small money-liking person was very cute, in a friendly (not fuzzy-bunny) type of way. Lorne sat silent for the longest time.
“This is good,” he said. “Wow.” He paused for dramatic effect, making everyone groan. “Hopie’s not a Cosmolotite,” he said finally. ‘She’s sort of the cosmic equivalent of a Xerox machine.”
“Uh, no offense,” Buffy said to the demon, “but what in the world are you talking about?”
“Well, from what I got from that beautiful little song there, it all started with The Powers that Were.” Everyone looked even more confused.
“The Powers that Were?” Cordy asked. He nodded.
“Before The Powers that Be,” Lorne explained, “there were The Powers that Were. This is before good, before evil, before it all. When The Powers that Were started losing ground to the Powers that Be and the forces of evil, they did the only thing they could think of to safe guard against the ultimate power struggle between good and evil. They set loose all of their magic in the form of a single energy that would come to life at the dawn of the age of the apocalypse. A magic that could do what even The Powers that Be cannot: duplicate an essence, a destiny.
“See, Those Powers that Were were pretty smart. They figured it would get to be a pretty dangerous game between good and evil at the end, so they let their magic flow into one giant cosmic rule. No major player in the apocalypse could be completely removed to another dimension before playing his or her role.
“The magic, Hopie’s magic, senses the person leaving and copies their essence, storing it in her own body. The Powers that Were didn’t foresee you guys returning from the alternate planes. Hopie was supposed to take your spots. Then again, they probably didn’t foresee it happening more than once either.”
“What happening more than once?” Anya asked, not quite seeing the big picture.
“Crossing into and out of another realm,” Giles replied. “Angel went to hell and back, Buffy to heaven, Connor to a hell dimension, and Cordy to…” Giles shot Cordy a questioning look.
“Also heaven,” she clarified, “on business.”
“So that little Xerox machine tied to Hopie’s soul worked overtime, copying your essences, your souls, and most of all your destinies into her own.” The enormity of the situation hit them. Hopie was a soul/destiny Kinko’s, open twenty-four hours a day. Cordy looked at her. She was bouncing on one foot, singing softly to herself the Spice Girls song she had just heard her friends and family singing.
“Time to play?” Hopie asked, wheedling. She gave Buffy some very cute little girl eyes. Buffy shrugged. She could see the greedy research lust in Giles’s eyes, and this way she wouldn’t have to hit the books.
“Sure, kiddo,” she replied.
“Aunt Cordy?” Hopie asked. Cordy shook her head, glad that Buffy was here. She was feeling way to overwhelmed to wage a pretend war with Hopie.
“Do you want to spar?” Buffy asked.
“What’s spar?” asked Hopie. Buffy told her. Hopie was giddy.
“Spar, spar, spar, spar…” she ran off singing. Buffy followed her, and the others watched them go: the slayer and the…
“Does she have a name?” Angel asked. “A title,” he clarified.
“As a matter of fact,” Lorne replied, “The Powers that Were referred to their magic as Shanshu-Itzca.”
“Shanshu?” asked Angel, looking towards the spot where Hopie had stood a minute before. Everyone stood, for what seemed like the millionth time that day, in absolute silence.