Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or situations. Joss does.
Author's Note: Slightly AU. Set about a year after Angel and co. go to Wolfram and Hart, except none of the Illyria/Cordy/Lindsey/Eve stuff ever happened. And neither did Harm's Way. Pretty much Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Fred, and Wesley are just doing their usual jobs at W&H, and Cordy's still in her coma. Oh, and Spike is still dead. The first of my fics to have more than one part.
"Harmony!" Angel yelled. He had been waiting for his blood for half an hour now, and his twit of an assistant was nowhere to be found. He had no idea why he, or Wesley rather, had hired her anyway. He had to admit though, it was nice to have someone who knew what good blood tasted like. Cordelia had tried hard, so he never had the heart to tell her the cinnamon was disgusting. He smiled to himself at the memory of how proud she was of her little culinary discovery. Ingesting that horrible stuff had been worth it just for the look on her face. Part of the reason he put up with Harmony was that she was a reminder of Cordelia, but a substitute she wasn't. Not that he would want her to be. All he wanted was Cordy back.
There was a knock on the door. "Finally, Harm!" he exclaimed. "I have been waiting for—." Suddenly he realized it wasn't Harmony standing in the doorway but rather a tall, dark-haired girl wearing jeans and a tank top. For a moment his heart leapt at the thought that it was Cordy, but before he could jump up and make a fool of himself, he realized it wasn't her. The girl did look familiar though.
"Angel, hey. Sorry, your secretary didn't seem to be around, so I let myself in."
Well this was embarrassing. She seemed to know him, and he didn't...all of a sudden he realized who it was. She had definitely grown up a lot since he last saw her, but it was her alright.
"Dawn?"
"Yeah. Sorry, it looks like I'm interrupting a brood. I'll come back when you're chipperer...or whatever the word is for more chipper. Although that probably won't be any time soon, so maybe—"
"Dawn, what are you doing here? Is it Buffy?" Angel was immediately worried. He couldn't handle something happening to Buffy again. Not now, with Cordy too.
"Buffy? Oh no, she's fine. I'm staying with my dad this summer, so I just thought I'd drop by," she said casually, as she came up and sat in the chair, twirling around. "Ooh, swivelly. You must have a lot of fun with these things when no one's looking."
Angel was confused. He would never understand teenagers. "You just thought you would drop by? We haven't seen each other in years."
"Exactly. And can't two old friends catch up without an apocalypse looming over their heads?" Dawn put her feet up on his desk, then quickly removed them under his reproving stare.
Angel was dumbfounded. He didn't want to hurt the girl's feelings, but he would hardly call them friends. Last time he saw her she was about twelve, and the only times they ever really spoke were when he was helping Buffy to rescue her from one perilous position or another. "Um, I guess we could hang out then." He awkwardly sat back down in his chair. It was strange to think that Buffy had been this age when they met. This girl seemed so far removed from his world. "So, good weather, huh?"
Dawn resisted the urge to laugh at his social awkardness. "Um, yeah. Much better than Cleveland. That's where we've been staying."
"Right, so I heard." Angel nodded about a dozen times, willing himself to say something else, but finally Dawn spoke instead.
"Alright, this is too weird. The reason I actually came was I was hoping you could give me a job for the summer."
"A job? I run a law firm, and seeing as you're sixteen, I doubt very much you have a law degree, so I don't really see..."
"Seventeen. And I could help you fight! I mean, you do still fight, right?"
"Of course," Angel responded indignantly. "I mean no. I mean I fight, but you can't. Buffy would never let me hear the end of it if I gave her baby sister a job fighting demons." Dawn scowled at the use of the term 'baby'. "Can't you work at McDonald's or something?"
"But I don't want to work at McDonald's. Buffy's enjoying living a normal life, since she's been fighting for so long, but I kind of miss the whole evil-fighting gig. I feel useless in school, and I'd feel even more useless working for Mickey D's. Besides, the year before the town collapsed, I was totally Buffy's right hand gal. I got wicked good with a stake. I totally just staked a vamp down in the parking lot."
"So if I called Buffy right now, she would say it was fine for you to fight demons professionally all summer?"
Dawn looked away. "Well, maybe not. Okay, well, I could do something else. Research or something!"
"We have a team of highly trained professionals doing that, some of them ex- watchers, all of them with at least seven languages. I don't know how much help you could really be."
Dawn's face fell. "Oh. Well, I could—"
"Wait a second," Angel interrupted. "You staked a vamp in the parking lot?"
"Yeah. I told you I'm a total badass. And you'll never guess who it was."
"Oh God, it wasn't Harmony was it?"
"Whoa. I thought Cordelia was the psychic one."
"No. It's just that we have tamper-proof vamp detectors in the building, so the only ones that can get onto the premises are Wolfram & Hart employees or clients. As far as I know, Harmony and I are the only employees, and we didn't have any vamp clients scheduled for today. Plus, she's like forty minutes late to bring me my blood."
Dawn was really confused. "Okay, hold up. Harmony works for you? You have vampire clients?" Suddenly she leapt up from the chair and back away towards the door. "Oh my God, Angelus?" she asked.
Angel rolled his eyes. "I'm not Angelus. I'm wearing a tie, for God's sake."
"Right, 'cause Angel's so known for his tie collection. If you're not Angelus, then why would you have vampires working for you and vice versa?"
Angel was about to answer when he realized exactly how absurd his situation was. If he didn't know better, he would think he was evil too. "Look Dawn, I'm not exactly sure how I got in this position either, but you can trust that it's me. And if I were evil, why would I tell you about the vampires working for me?"
"It doesn't make much sense to me either, but better safe than sorry, right? I'm not as trusting as Buffy was, okay? No dropping the crossbow and baring my neck this time, buddy." She pulled a stake and a cross out of her jacket pockets as she said this, still backing towards the door, but still curious enough not to leave.
"You were there?"
"I hid outside. I was looking through the window. When Buffy and Mom found out I was grounded for a month. In retrospect, probably not that smart of me."
"Yeah, probably not," said Angel angrily, thinking about what Darla might have done to her if she found her. He took a step towards her, but she moved back again, all the way to the door.
"Where's Cordelia?"
"What?" That wasn't what he expected to hear. As far as he knew, Dawn barely knew Cordy.
"Where is she? If you're not evil, then tell me where she is so I can ask her for myself."
Angel looked down. "She's in the hospital."
"Oh God. What did you do to her?"
"Nothing!" The reply came out angrier than expected.
"Where's, um, that other guy then? Buffy's old watcher? He works for you now, right? I want to talk to him."
"Dawn, you don't have to—"
"I want to talk to him!"
"Fine. I'm just going to go to my desk and call him."
"Where's his office? I'll go see him myself."
Angel almost smiled despite himself. Dawn really had grown pretty tough. He was heartened to know that if he ever should revert to his soulless self, she would be able to take care of herself. "Down the hall to the right."
Dawn took off down the hallway. Angel figured following would just scare her more, so he sat back down at his desk. After a few minutes, Dawn came back into the room, followed by Wesley, looking kind of embarrassed.
"Okay, so your soul's intact. But you can't blame me for being careful."
"You're right. I can't. Now can we get back to the business of you killing my assistant?"
"Oh yeah, about that; Wesley's explained that she works for you and all, but I'm not going to apologize or anything. She tried to bite me!"
"She did!?" both Wesley and Angel asked in unison.
"Yuhuh."
"But Harmony doesn't..."
"She's a vampire with no soul and no chip, who just doesn't kill humans to impress you guys? Please. She saw me, recognized me as Buffy's sister, and started freaking out that I was bait in some big trap. Then she tried to attack me, so I killed her."
"But that would be so stupid of..." started Wesley, trailing off. "Ah."
"Yeah. Harmony's never been known for her immense intellect, has she boys?"
The two men looked at each other, embarrassed at having allowed a killer to work for them for a year. Even if she only killed under stress, it still seemed like enough to revoke their good guy membership cards.
"You're not going to tell anyone about this, are you Dawn?" Angel asked.
Dawn suddenly got a devious look in her eye. "No, of course not. Not if you give me her job."
Angel smiled. This girl had the manipulative streak of a, well of a Cordy. But being blackmailed into hiring someone was even more reason for his 'good guy'ness to be revoked. "Look Dawn, I'm sorry, but why don't you take this opportunity to spend some time with your father, and—"
"Angel, I'm supposed to be spending this time with him! I know that. Don't you think I was excited when he said he wanted to reconnect with me!? Buffy wouldn't even consider coming, but I wanted to. I thought it was going to be just like when I was little, but he's never home. He's leaving on a business trip tomorrow for two weeks, and even when he's in town he doesn't get home till late anyway! I'm not going to spend my summer sitting around an empty apartment, feeling sorry for myself! I'm going to do some good and if you won't hire me then I'll be forced to wander around dark alleys at night, armed only with a stake and my razor-sharp wit!"
Angel had hoped that Buffy's father had gotten his shit together by now, but it sounded like he hadn't. Since everything with Connor, he had even more trouble understanding how someone could be fortunate enough to have two amazing children and then just not want to see them. He could still remember how hurt Buffy was when her father hadn't made it to her birthday figure skating thing. At least she had Giles. Dawn had no one. She didn't have Joyce anymore, and thanks to her father's false promises she didn't even have Buffy right now.
Dawn watched Angel's face, knowing that the sad little orphan girl act would probably work on him. That was all it was after all. She didn't mind that her dad was busy. She didn't really want to hang out with him anyway. Yeah, right. She wished she could think this way, but she couldn't. She may as well use the anger to her advantage anyway.
Dawn knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. "Okay, you can have the job." She was glad she wasn't going to have to bring out the tears.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she squealed. "You won't regret this. I'm super-organized, and I used to heat Spike's blood for him all the time. Have you ever tried Weetabix crumbled in with it before? Gives it texture. Not that I would know, but that's what he claims. Or claimed. I don't know if you would like the same way or not, but..." Dawn continued in this vein for the better part of ten minutes, before Angel had to go for an "appointment." He sent Dawn over to Lorne for orientation, hoping the green guy could keep her off his hands for a while. It was going to be a long summer.
Author's Note: Slightly AU. Set about a year after Angel and co. go to Wolfram and Hart, except none of the Illyria/Cordy/Lindsey/Eve stuff ever happened. And neither did Harm's Way. Pretty much Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Fred, and Wesley are just doing their usual jobs at W&H, and Cordy's still in her coma. Oh, and Spike is still dead. The first of my fics to have more than one part.
"Harmony!" Angel yelled. He had been waiting for his blood for half an hour now, and his twit of an assistant was nowhere to be found. He had no idea why he, or Wesley rather, had hired her anyway. He had to admit though, it was nice to have someone who knew what good blood tasted like. Cordelia had tried hard, so he never had the heart to tell her the cinnamon was disgusting. He smiled to himself at the memory of how proud she was of her little culinary discovery. Ingesting that horrible stuff had been worth it just for the look on her face. Part of the reason he put up with Harmony was that she was a reminder of Cordelia, but a substitute she wasn't. Not that he would want her to be. All he wanted was Cordy back.
There was a knock on the door. "Finally, Harm!" he exclaimed. "I have been waiting for—." Suddenly he realized it wasn't Harmony standing in the doorway but rather a tall, dark-haired girl wearing jeans and a tank top. For a moment his heart leapt at the thought that it was Cordy, but before he could jump up and make a fool of himself, he realized it wasn't her. The girl did look familiar though.
"Angel, hey. Sorry, your secretary didn't seem to be around, so I let myself in."
Well this was embarrassing. She seemed to know him, and he didn't...all of a sudden he realized who it was. She had definitely grown up a lot since he last saw her, but it was her alright.
"Dawn?"
"Yeah. Sorry, it looks like I'm interrupting a brood. I'll come back when you're chipperer...or whatever the word is for more chipper. Although that probably won't be any time soon, so maybe—"
"Dawn, what are you doing here? Is it Buffy?" Angel was immediately worried. He couldn't handle something happening to Buffy again. Not now, with Cordy too.
"Buffy? Oh no, she's fine. I'm staying with my dad this summer, so I just thought I'd drop by," she said casually, as she came up and sat in the chair, twirling around. "Ooh, swivelly. You must have a lot of fun with these things when no one's looking."
Angel was confused. He would never understand teenagers. "You just thought you would drop by? We haven't seen each other in years."
"Exactly. And can't two old friends catch up without an apocalypse looming over their heads?" Dawn put her feet up on his desk, then quickly removed them under his reproving stare.
Angel was dumbfounded. He didn't want to hurt the girl's feelings, but he would hardly call them friends. Last time he saw her she was about twelve, and the only times they ever really spoke were when he was helping Buffy to rescue her from one perilous position or another. "Um, I guess we could hang out then." He awkwardly sat back down in his chair. It was strange to think that Buffy had been this age when they met. This girl seemed so far removed from his world. "So, good weather, huh?"
Dawn resisted the urge to laugh at his social awkardness. "Um, yeah. Much better than Cleveland. That's where we've been staying."
"Right, so I heard." Angel nodded about a dozen times, willing himself to say something else, but finally Dawn spoke instead.
"Alright, this is too weird. The reason I actually came was I was hoping you could give me a job for the summer."
"A job? I run a law firm, and seeing as you're sixteen, I doubt very much you have a law degree, so I don't really see..."
"Seventeen. And I could help you fight! I mean, you do still fight, right?"
"Of course," Angel responded indignantly. "I mean no. I mean I fight, but you can't. Buffy would never let me hear the end of it if I gave her baby sister a job fighting demons." Dawn scowled at the use of the term 'baby'. "Can't you work at McDonald's or something?"
"But I don't want to work at McDonald's. Buffy's enjoying living a normal life, since she's been fighting for so long, but I kind of miss the whole evil-fighting gig. I feel useless in school, and I'd feel even more useless working for Mickey D's. Besides, the year before the town collapsed, I was totally Buffy's right hand gal. I got wicked good with a stake. I totally just staked a vamp down in the parking lot."
"So if I called Buffy right now, she would say it was fine for you to fight demons professionally all summer?"
Dawn looked away. "Well, maybe not. Okay, well, I could do something else. Research or something!"
"We have a team of highly trained professionals doing that, some of them ex- watchers, all of them with at least seven languages. I don't know how much help you could really be."
Dawn's face fell. "Oh. Well, I could—"
"Wait a second," Angel interrupted. "You staked a vamp in the parking lot?"
"Yeah. I told you I'm a total badass. And you'll never guess who it was."
"Oh God, it wasn't Harmony was it?"
"Whoa. I thought Cordelia was the psychic one."
"No. It's just that we have tamper-proof vamp detectors in the building, so the only ones that can get onto the premises are Wolfram & Hart employees or clients. As far as I know, Harmony and I are the only employees, and we didn't have any vamp clients scheduled for today. Plus, she's like forty minutes late to bring me my blood."
Dawn was really confused. "Okay, hold up. Harmony works for you? You have vampire clients?" Suddenly she leapt up from the chair and back away towards the door. "Oh my God, Angelus?" she asked.
Angel rolled his eyes. "I'm not Angelus. I'm wearing a tie, for God's sake."
"Right, 'cause Angel's so known for his tie collection. If you're not Angelus, then why would you have vampires working for you and vice versa?"
Angel was about to answer when he realized exactly how absurd his situation was. If he didn't know better, he would think he was evil too. "Look Dawn, I'm not exactly sure how I got in this position either, but you can trust that it's me. And if I were evil, why would I tell you about the vampires working for me?"
"It doesn't make much sense to me either, but better safe than sorry, right? I'm not as trusting as Buffy was, okay? No dropping the crossbow and baring my neck this time, buddy." She pulled a stake and a cross out of her jacket pockets as she said this, still backing towards the door, but still curious enough not to leave.
"You were there?"
"I hid outside. I was looking through the window. When Buffy and Mom found out I was grounded for a month. In retrospect, probably not that smart of me."
"Yeah, probably not," said Angel angrily, thinking about what Darla might have done to her if she found her. He took a step towards her, but she moved back again, all the way to the door.
"Where's Cordelia?"
"What?" That wasn't what he expected to hear. As far as he knew, Dawn barely knew Cordy.
"Where is she? If you're not evil, then tell me where she is so I can ask her for myself."
Angel looked down. "She's in the hospital."
"Oh God. What did you do to her?"
"Nothing!" The reply came out angrier than expected.
"Where's, um, that other guy then? Buffy's old watcher? He works for you now, right? I want to talk to him."
"Dawn, you don't have to—"
"I want to talk to him!"
"Fine. I'm just going to go to my desk and call him."
"Where's his office? I'll go see him myself."
Angel almost smiled despite himself. Dawn really had grown pretty tough. He was heartened to know that if he ever should revert to his soulless self, she would be able to take care of herself. "Down the hall to the right."
Dawn took off down the hallway. Angel figured following would just scare her more, so he sat back down at his desk. After a few minutes, Dawn came back into the room, followed by Wesley, looking kind of embarrassed.
"Okay, so your soul's intact. But you can't blame me for being careful."
"You're right. I can't. Now can we get back to the business of you killing my assistant?"
"Oh yeah, about that; Wesley's explained that she works for you and all, but I'm not going to apologize or anything. She tried to bite me!"
"She did!?" both Wesley and Angel asked in unison.
"Yuhuh."
"But Harmony doesn't..."
"She's a vampire with no soul and no chip, who just doesn't kill humans to impress you guys? Please. She saw me, recognized me as Buffy's sister, and started freaking out that I was bait in some big trap. Then she tried to attack me, so I killed her."
"But that would be so stupid of..." started Wesley, trailing off. "Ah."
"Yeah. Harmony's never been known for her immense intellect, has she boys?"
The two men looked at each other, embarrassed at having allowed a killer to work for them for a year. Even if she only killed under stress, it still seemed like enough to revoke their good guy membership cards.
"You're not going to tell anyone about this, are you Dawn?" Angel asked.
Dawn suddenly got a devious look in her eye. "No, of course not. Not if you give me her job."
Angel smiled. This girl had the manipulative streak of a, well of a Cordy. But being blackmailed into hiring someone was even more reason for his 'good guy'ness to be revoked. "Look Dawn, I'm sorry, but why don't you take this opportunity to spend some time with your father, and—"
"Angel, I'm supposed to be spending this time with him! I know that. Don't you think I was excited when he said he wanted to reconnect with me!? Buffy wouldn't even consider coming, but I wanted to. I thought it was going to be just like when I was little, but he's never home. He's leaving on a business trip tomorrow for two weeks, and even when he's in town he doesn't get home till late anyway! I'm not going to spend my summer sitting around an empty apartment, feeling sorry for myself! I'm going to do some good and if you won't hire me then I'll be forced to wander around dark alleys at night, armed only with a stake and my razor-sharp wit!"
Angel had hoped that Buffy's father had gotten his shit together by now, but it sounded like he hadn't. Since everything with Connor, he had even more trouble understanding how someone could be fortunate enough to have two amazing children and then just not want to see them. He could still remember how hurt Buffy was when her father hadn't made it to her birthday figure skating thing. At least she had Giles. Dawn had no one. She didn't have Joyce anymore, and thanks to her father's false promises she didn't even have Buffy right now.
Dawn watched Angel's face, knowing that the sad little orphan girl act would probably work on him. That was all it was after all. She didn't mind that her dad was busy. She didn't really want to hang out with him anyway. Yeah, right. She wished she could think this way, but she couldn't. She may as well use the anger to her advantage anyway.
Dawn knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. "Okay, you can have the job." She was glad she wasn't going to have to bring out the tears.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she squealed. "You won't regret this. I'm super-organized, and I used to heat Spike's blood for him all the time. Have you ever tried Weetabix crumbled in with it before? Gives it texture. Not that I would know, but that's what he claims. Or claimed. I don't know if you would like the same way or not, but..." Dawn continued in this vein for the better part of ten minutes, before Angel had to go for an "appointment." He sent Dawn over to Lorne for orientation, hoping the green guy could keep her off his hands for a while. It was going to be a long summer.