Angelic Intentions?

by kuschelirmel

Angel has given his first interview as CEO of Wolfram & Hart. He's not all that happy with the situation and recapitulates what has brought him there, all the while asking himself if his decision was right.

Autor: Jasmin
E-Mail: jasmin at kuschelirmel.de
Homepage: kuschelirmel.de
Show: Angel (between 5x02 "Just Rewards" and 5x03 "Unleashed"; spoilers up to that point and also for Buffy up to 7x22 "Chosen")
Disclaimer: The characters and pictures are not mine, they belong to Mutant Enemy & WB as well as whoever else is involved in this. I'm doing this strictly for fun, there's no money made here.
Raiting: Pg-13
Status: Complete
Synopsis: Angel has given his first interview as CEO of Wolfram & Hart. He's not all that happy with the situation and recapitulates what has brought him there, all the while asking himself if his decision was right.
Author's note: This fanfic starts with a magazine article which exists also in jpeg-format at http/kuschelirmel.de/pics/angel/fanfic/angelic-intentions.jpg for those of you interested in such things ;) – Feedback is always welcome, be it positive or critical – especially since this is my first attempt at writing an English fanfiction.
Thanks to c3ph31d. for helping me find a title for the magazine, as well as hyperphusion. and Taklara (storywelten.de) for spell-checking.

---xxx---

Interview with Angel, CEO of Wolfram & Hart

Angelic Intentions?

After having been shut down for months, the Wolfram & Hart office building in downtown Los Angeles is once again bustling with life. This is where the stars come when in need of help, the place where billionaires seek advice in legal matters. Recently, the firm has undergone some changes including a complete renovation of not only the building, but also the staff. The name of the new CEO sounds more like he was a celebrity himself: Angel.

Reflections: What our readers would like to know is, who is this new guy with only one name heading the biggest and most influential law firm in the city?

Angel: I'm just me, nothing special. The L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart has been a source of worries for the Senior Partners for years now and they trust me to run things more smoothly than my predecessors have.

Reflections: But why you? As far as I'm informed you're not a lawyer and haven't always been on good terms with the firm in the past, to say the least.

Angel: I won't deny that we've had our differences, but they made an offer I couldn't refuse.

Reflections: Which was?

Angel: The Senior Partners let me run the firm on my own terms, the resources here are amazing.

Reflections: And what do your superiors get out of that?

Angel: As I said, they're hoping I can get the L.A. branch back to what it used to be, without all the bad publicity of the last years.

Reflections: Rumor has it the renovation of the office building wasn't purely cosmetic...

Angel: And what else is it supposed to have been then?

Reflections: It's said something blew up, an act of sabotage or terrorism was suspected.

Angel: I can assure you, terrorists had nothing to do with it.

Reflections: Sabotage, then. Someone holding a grudge against the firm?

Angel: Any suspects?

Reflections: You perhaps.

Angel: Please. Would the Senior Partners make me CEO if I'd tried for sabotage? Besides, there was no such thing.

Reflections: Isn't it right that your past with Wolfram & Hart hasn't been all roses?

Angel (shrugs): The people I held a grudge against no longer work here.

Reflections: Some of them died in a wine cellar in 2000, isn't that true?

Angel: There was an unfortunate incident at a party at Holland Manners' house, that's right. Tragic, it was, but whether or not I liked them hardly matters, does it?

Reflections: It wouldn't if you hadn't been seen near the crime scene that night.

Angel: Don't you think that if I had something to do with that I'd be in jail right now instead of sitting here chatting with you? After all, this is a law firm, just in case you forgot.

Reflections: Before being appointed CEO of Wolfram & Hart's L.A. branch, you ran a detective agency called "Angel Investigations", is that correct?

Angel: Yes, we tried to help those who needed us most and that's what we'll be continuing to do here, too.

Reflections: Which kinds of cases did you take?

Angel: All kinds, often people would come to us if they'd been harrassed or threatened.

Reflections: And you could protect them.

Angel: Me and my team did, yes.

Reflections: I see. And your co-workers? Did you bring them with you over to Wolfram & Hart?

Angel: Yes, actually I did. Wesley Wyndom-Pryce does our research, Winifred Burkle heads the science department and Charles Gunn has an eye on the legal issues.

Reflections: You had one more employee at Angel Investigations called Cordelia Chase. What happened to her? Rumor has it she's in a coma?

Angel: Yes, she is. She had an accident.

Reflections: Can you tell us more about that?

Angel: No, I can't. This is rather private, you see.

Reflections: I understand. So, what will the future bring?

Angel: No one can tell that precisely, but we hope to use our resources to help those who can't help themselves.

Reflections: A noble quest. Thank you for your time, Angel.

---xxx---

Angel put the magazine down on his desk in front of him. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head slightly. So this was going to be his life now; giving interviews, posing for cameras and trying not to say anything that could get him into trouble.

And that was a lot. Starting with him having in fact been at the wine cellar to the reason he was sitting in this chair now. In a way, he still hated the firm just like he had when the lawyers had died at Darla's and Drusilla's hands, or rather fangs. He had known what the two vampires would do to them, but he'd chosen to walk away, letting his anger get the better of him.

Wolfram & Hart had brought Darla, his sire, back as a human being. She'd been supposed to seduce him into either sleeping with her or into Angel making her a vampire again, because Darla was dying just the way she would have if the Master hadn't turned her in the first place.

Both plans had been designed to make Angel lose his soul again, or at least make him vulnerable to whatever the lawyers had in mind next, but both failed. Angel wasn't going to turn Darla into a soulless monster again, so Wolfram & Hart sought Drusilla out and brought her to L.A. to do it instead. Angel had wanted to save Darla, and by doing so hoped to redeem himself at least a little.

When the lawyers refused to let Darla die in peace, Angel knew he would have to stake her as well as Drusilla, but he simply couldn't do it then. Everything seemed to have lost its meaning, Angel had felt like he couldn't win anyway, so why bother? But he soon realized, that if there is no great plan, then every little thing you do counts and he'd tried to live that way.

Angel sighed. Thinking about Darla had always made him even more broody than usual, but he couldn't help himself. Reading the interview had gotten him into a reflective mood.

What kind of name for a magazine was "Reflections" anyway? The magazine wasn't really reflective at all, it was one of those shallow, stars & gossip kind of journals, where the interviewer always tries to pry some information from the interviewee to make him or her look bad or at least conspicous.

Angel looked at the captions again, raising his eyebrows. The one underneath a picture of him behind his desk said: 'Angel in his new office at Wolfram & Hart: "I won't deny that we've had our differences."' The second caption read: 'Angel: "They made an offer I couldn't refuse."'

They sounded to Angel as if he'd somehow been bribed to take his new position. Thinking about it, he had to admit that it wasn't too far from the truth, but again, the truth was something he could never tell anyone, not even his own team in this case.

It had all started with Darla resurfacing again, pregnant. And Angel was the daddy, no doubt about that. What had been doubted for quite some time was, which part the child itself was going to play. Was it going to be evil? A vampire from birth or human? How was this possible anyway, two vampires going to be parents?

In the end, Darla died giving birth and the baby boy named Connor was indeed human, no evilness detectable. Angel and the gang did their best to care for the child, but because of a prophecy saying 'the father will kill the son', which later proved to be false, Wesley took the boy away. Holtz, an old enemy of Angel, thus got the chance to lay his hand on Connor and to abduct him to a hell dimension known as Quor-Toth. There he raised the boy to hate all vampires, his real father included.

Angel had a hard time trying to cope with the loss of his son and wasn't willing to forgive Wesley. He tried everything to get Connor back, but failed. When Angel had almost given up hope of seeing his baby again, teenage Connor was catapulted back into this dimension, ready to fight his dad. Holtz had come back as well and used Connor to hurt Angel. The events culminated in Holtz's staged death, for which Connor held Angel responsible. In an act of revenge, Connor trapped Angel in a box and plunged him into the ocean, where he'd stayed for three months.

If it hadn't been for Wesley, Angel thought, he'd still be there, but their relationship just hadn't been the same since Connor had been abducted. And how could it have been? Now that Wesley didn't even remember that Connor was Angel's son, they had another chance, here at Wolfram & Hart. No one but Angel remembered, but this was the price he just had to pay.

Angel sighed deeply once more. It had been the ultimate bargain, his son was to get a normal life in a normal family. That had been the offer he couldn't refuse. No more vampires and no more memories of growing up in a hell dimension. Connor would retain his vampire-like reflexes and senses, but as he wouldn't know about them or need them he would be able to lead a normal life. If that meant for Angel that he had to forgo being a part of it and take his chances at Wolfram & Hart, so be it.

His team knew nothing about all that, they still thought he'd taken on the job for the same reason they had, the resources. The others didn't remember what crucial role Connor had played in delivering Jasmine to this world, a demon lulling everyone around her into a sense of peace and security while feeding off the souls of her followers, a dozen a day. The Senior Partners had decided that destroying this seemingly peaceful world merited a reward, the reward being the firm's L.A. branch.

Angel didn't trust the truce. He was constantly waiting for the big bang. And the fact that he suddenly had to worry about journalists ready to question his every move while he couldn't even tell them what he was actually doing, didn't make it any easier. Granted, he really liked his office and the fact that he could actually look out into the sun from there without getting fried. He also liked the cars and helicopters and what not that made it possible for him to get anywhere without caring about the time of day. And he loved the looks on his team's faces when they'd solved another case they wouldn't have been able to solve a few weeks back.

Be that as it may, he knew his team didn't trust their new employers either, although they all loved their new toys. Gunn had even gone as far as letting the Senior Partners "enhance" his brain - whatever that was supposed to mean. For all they knew, Gunn could now be a spy for their employers without him even knowing. Angel was sure of one thing, though, Wolfram & Hart didn't give out treats for nothing, there was a price tag attached to everything here, they just couldn't read what was written on it, yet.

An example for that was the amulet Wolfram & Hart had given Angel almost two weeks ago. It was supposed to play a key role in averting yet another apocalypse in Sunnydale, therefore Angel brought it to Buffy. It was said that the amulet had to be worn by a champion with a soul but stronger than human, so Angel had assumed he was the only one suitable for the job, until Buffy told him Spike now had a soul, too. She'd send Angel away, while Spike got to wear the amulet and save the world in doing so.

Spike had burned to ashes then, which had been at least some consolation for Angel, as he would never have to deal with Mr. Peroxide again... or so he'd thought. Some days ago the amulet had been delivered back via mail and when Angel had opened the envelope it was in, a ghostly Spike had appeared in the middle of his office. The worst part of it was, that Spike apparently couldn't leave the building, let alone the city. Now, Angel would have to deal with Spike on a daily basis and couldn't even hit him. He just hoped that Fred would be sucessful in making Spike corporeal again soon.

Angel shook his head to clear it. He remembered all too well why he had taken the job, but had it been the right decision? He'd seen his son laugh with his new family and he had finally found out where Cordelia was, although that last part didn't help much. She still was in a coma, now being cared for in a hospital and her best treatment guaranteed because the firm was paying the bills. That was better than not knowing where she was, yes, surely, but still she wasn't well again, as he'd so hoped.

No, he wouldn't go there, he simply couldn't. There were too many things that needed his attention now, he couldn't let himself be distracted by the past or an uncertain future. He had to make the best of it and that meant getting Wolfram & Hart under control. And the first step should be to meet with the gang and see if any of them had anything more tangible to offer than just concerns. Angel would have loved to call them right then and talk to them, but he knew it would be better to meet somewhere where they couldn't be overheard. A park would be great.

- the end -