Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel don't belong to me, but to Joss Whedon and all those who have a legal claim to them. Characters like Aurora and Ralph are of my imagination, though, forced somehow into their universe.
Timeline: Somewhere after Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. Charles Gunn doesn't appear, because I couldn't figure out how to fit him in.
Please send feedback to slayerbelle@go.com
Protection
by Slayerbelle
Chapter 1 - In Dreams
He dreamed about her only once, which didn't make up for the lifetime she'd devoted to him.
He was in New York again, walking through the same foggy alleys. Only this time he walked them with no blinding hunger. He was himself, souled, tortured, but with a purpose, watching his old New York. There was music in his ear, like the dream had a soundtrack, punctuating his every step, his every movement. There was a woman singing the song in his head, and if he had bothered to stop and listen he was sure she was saying something relevant.
And then he saw her. Not the source of the music in his head, but another girl entirely, standing under a street light at an empty intersection. Dark haired, petite, strangely familiar, though he was certain he had never seen her before.
Something moved before his eyes and he blinked. Suddenly he was in his old house -- the abandoned mansion in Sunnydale. It was empty, but exactly as he had left it, like he was still in it. She was there, standing near the fireplace, right about where the chains hung from a metal ring in the ceiling. He approached her, tentatively.
"Do I know you?" he asked.
In a second his eyes seemed to shift and now he was in the Bronze, the way it was when he first came to Sunnydale years ago. He and the girl, looking at him in earnest now, standing still, ignored, in the middle of a packed dance floor.
"You don't recognize me." Her voice dripped of regret, but she was smiling.
"I don't."
"It's OK." She moved closer to him, and he noticed that he was going to whisper something in his ear. She lifted herself up on her toes. He met her halfway by bending down.
Her lips barely brushed his ear, moving in words that he couldn't hear. She finished what she said and straightened up. He wanted to ask her to say it again, he didn't hear her, and then he noticed that her left hand was concealed behind her back.
She recoiled it and in one brisk motion plunged a stake into his heart.
====
As if to punctuate his primal scream at being dusted by the girl, he awoke to the more feminine scream emanating from downstairs, followed by a metallic crash.
Heart, chest, limbs, check. Made a quick inventory before throwing himself out of bed to check on Cordelia. He secretly hoped she didn't have visions on the Ming vase he on a whim set atop the coffee table last week.
By the time he got to her, she was trying to lift herself up onto the sofa.
"Cordy."
"This is a totally wrong place for a coffee table! You know I almost banged my head on that ugly blue urn?"
"Yeah, I'm glad it's OK."
Off her glare, he amended his relief. "I mean, I'm glad you're OK. That you didn't hit the expensive urn and all."
"No thanks to you, Sleepy Boy."
"Do you need anything? Water?"
She gestured toward the spot where she was lying prone in just a second ago. "A nice little bean bag right *there* would have been perfect. No, I'm fine." Cordelia settled down into the couch and caught her breath. "It's a night club."
"What you saw?"
"The one we were just in last week -- I remember the aftertaste of the bad vodka and mixed nuts."
"This is the one near the beach?"
"Jazz At Harold's. Creepy valet. That's it." A few deep breaths and Cordelia was getting back on Cordy mode. "There's a girl. Brunette, little cheeky, long hair, she gets attacked by something. Why did you scream?"
"What?"
"I heard you just now. Right before my head was chopped from the inside by my own PTB-sponsored ax. You screamed, I thought you were in trouble."
"Bad dream."
"Oh." Cordelia paused. Angel was never one to share, but she always gave him the obligatory pause before pouncing. "What exactly are bad dreams for you, anyway? I mean, monsters and demons are your normal life, so your nightmares would have to be... fluffy bunnies?"
"A girl staked me."
Her eyebrows twitched. "Slayer?"
"No. Just a girl."
====
He didn't care if the vodka was bad, he couldn't taste it anyway.
Angel scanned the moving bodies across the room, most of them couples paired off now, dancing slowly to the music of the handsome guy working the saxophone. Sexy music. If any girl was to be attacked, it would be after this song. He was almost certain her predator would be dancing with her right now, luring her into leaving the place with him after a few strategically placed hands and looks, a few hours of talking and a few glasses of bad liquor. This was that kind of place.
No one was leaving the dance floor yet.
He turned around, motioned the bartender to give him another round. He'd been waiting for an hour and still nothing, was already on his third drink. Cordelia should probably have given him a time. He didn't exactly bring enough cash for an all-night drinking spree.
A Scotch this time. Straight. The glass was filled up in front of him, he lifted it up to the bartender and downed it in one swoop.
And then he saw her. It was a quick, split-second reflection in the glass, but he saw her and he knew it was her.
Across the room, the other side of the dance floor, looking at him, was the girl from his dream. A dancing couple moved in front of her and Angel craned his neck to catch another view of her, but she was gone.
Weird, he thought to himself. He stood up from the bar stool, half ready to chase. He knew from experience that he shouldn't ignore his dreams, and that in his life coincidences were rare and far between. He crossed the dance floor, recalling in his head now if he had smelled her in his dream, because that would have made her easier to follow. He caught another scent instead.
Vampire. From the dance floor, leading a blonde out into the alley.
He hesitated. *Cordelia said brunette, and she won't be wrong about that.* But an assault was an assault, a vamp attack still a vamp attack.
Angel stepped out into the alley just in time to catch the vamp sinking his fangs onto the girl.
He tapped the vamp on the shoulder. "Mind if I cut in?"
The vamp was as pissed as anyone rudely interrupted in the middle of a great meal. "Mind your own business, Soul Boy."
Later on, it occurred to him that he should have asked about the origin of that comment. Would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. Instead, he chose this moment to skip the formalities, pull the well-dressed vamp from the blonde, and stake him.
The blonde gasped and ran away at his request, but the vamp, two seconds later, was still twitching on the floor, stake impaled in his chest.
"Damn, I missed." He said softly, but did not make a move, instead watched as the injured vamp's corpse twitched in pain. He knew from experience that this was a pain like no other -- like you were dying, only that pesky immortality thing just kicks in, and the pain never fades, it just goes on forever. Until someone un-impales you so you can heal.
Times like these he felt Angelus was not really gone, just lurking, because there was no reason for his strange fascination with the demon's pain.
A scream, a woman's scream, pierced the air. It was coming from around the corner. The brunette scheduled for saving, perhaps? Angel ran to check, turned the corner, into... nothing. The alley was empty.
*I'm really off my game tonight,* he murmured, casually flipping the stake he had whipped out in his hand. Maybe Cordelia got the hair color wrong, maybe he really did save who he was supposed to save tonight. Might as well make one clean sweep and return home.
Or not. As Angel returned to the alley where he staked well-dressed vamp, he saw a girl, *the* girl, leaning over him. He quickly hid behind the corner wall, unseen, watching as she removed the stake from the vamp's chest.
The vamp kept on writhing, still in pain (a hole in your chest can do that to you). The girl placed a hand against his shoulder to suppress his jerking about and held another hand against his wound. Angel saw a green light emanate from her palm, a soft green glow that was like energy flowing into the vampire.
Who stood up two seconds later and scampered off.
*She healed him,* he thought incredulously. He thought it was impossible. Not only that, she had healed a vampire wearing his monster face, so she knew what she was doing.
Shoes on pavement echoed in the alley. She threw a couple of cautious glances his way, and then started in the other direction.
*Oh no you don't.*
It was almost a growl. He sprang forward, soon outrunning her with his demon speed. She seemed to sense he was coming and whirled around, unafraid. His hand found her arm and grabbed, pushed her back against the wall.
"Who are you?" He demanded.
It wasn't just about the vamp healing now. They locked eyes and he knew it was her.
"You recognize me?" she said, voice cracking because of the pressure of the wall against her lungs, not from fear.
"Who are you?"
"It's better if you just let me go, Angel."
She staked him in his dream. She healed a vampire who almost killed a girl. Now he was pushing her against the wall she felt small, fragile, except for those steely eyes that didn't waver.
Should he be afraid of her? She had power, he could sense it now, being close enough to feel her pulse. It was different.
"You tell me who you are and we'll decide what's better for everyone," he hissed.
She was stoic. Almost unfeeling. He moved his hand to her throat, pushed her back against the wall again.
"Angel--" She started to protest again, but then stopped. Resolved to do as he asked. "My name is Aurora."
"Is that supposed to mean anything to me?"
"Aurora of the Kalderash people."
====
Pffffoooey.
Not only was the coffee ickily lukewarm, there was too much water in the coffee maker in the first place so it might as well have been brewed water with a caffeine aftertaste.
Cordelia tossed her cup back in the sink. The faucet started running seemingly on its own, the cup rinsing itself clean.
"Dennis! You didn't have to. But next time use lemon fresh!"
She realized it was Friday, and maybe she should have gone with Angel to the jazz bar. Bad vodka or not, she needed to get out more, she was starting to get those pangs of inadequacy again. Not like she could ask Wesley out again, because that would be just desperate and weird. At least when she was with Angel she got jealous glares from every other woman in the joint. That clears those inadequacy issues right up quick.
Maybe it's not too late, she thought, lifting a hand to grab her coat. Maybe I can still catch him and get a few nasty glares before midnight.
It hit her, again, before her hand touched the coat, missing it entirely now as she fell to floor, on the pillow that Dennis quickly slipped under her before she hurt herself.
Not the visions again. This didn't happen to her, not twice in the same day, not twice about the same person. But it was like another scene from a Tarantino flick -- quick cuts, jumpy music, the same bar, the same girl, only she could see now who attacked her, who had her by her throat against the wall.
Angel.
Her sudden intake of breath became a gasp. Reeling from the attack, trying to get her wits back as the pain subsided, Cordelia grabbed the phone.
What the hell was that about? Angel was supposed to be saving the girl, not -- unless, of course, that wasn't Angel.
"Wesley!" she said. "Meet me at the hotel. No, in front of it. And stock up for the Big Contingency."
====
She looked nothing like Jenny Calendar but he believed her. Her features were so far removed from the gypsy family he had tortured he wouldn't have guessed, but she did have their blood coursing through her and he could feel it.
He loosened up on her throat, just a little. "You worried about me turning again? I'd think your family would be off the hook by now, 'cause the curse this time around was performed by--"
"Willow Rosenberg in Sunnydale. I know."
"What?"
"Please let go of me."
Angel released her, and she straightened up, but didn't even blink. "Why?" he asked.
"Where do you want me to begin?"
"Why were you in my dream?"
For the first time since they'd met, she seemed to be taken aback. It took her a beat to digest this, and then she laughed. "OK, I did not see that one coming."
"Then let's start with the simple questions shall we? Why do you know me?"
"Can we go back to your office? You probably need to sit down for this."
====
When they entered what was formerly known as the Hyperion Hotel, he noticed that she paused for a second at the door. She looked the place up, down, around, and kind of sighed.
"I've never really been in here before," she said softly, as if sensing he had noticed her reaction to the place. "I mean, like this."
They sat in silence the entire twenty-minute drive from the Jazz At Harold's bar to the hotel. Aurora had preferred not to say anything until he "had settled down."
He had taken a softer tone with her. She didn't look like she was going to attack him, nor did he feel like restraining her. She just looked... well, normal. She couldn't have been taller than Buffy, or thinner. In her early twenties. He sensed something strong in her, but not power the way Buffy was a Slayer, not the way Willow was a witch.
He couldn't put his finger on it.
Now they were in his home, his office, and he was wondering whether he should offer her coffee.
"Where would you like me to sit?" he asked.
She pointed to the couches on their receiving area. "This should do just fine. You're not mocking me, are you?"
"Listen, I don't know who you are--"
"I know. You don't. You shouldn't." She watched him pick a couch and settle down before she sat right across from him. Drawing a breath all of a sudden, she exhaled it slow and ragged. "I don't know where to start. Too long a story, too many subplots. Ask me what's most bothering you first."
"OK. Question number 1. Why do you know me?"
She shook her head. "That's easy. I'm from the Kalderash family, Angel. We know you better than we know our own kind. You're the story they tell to put us to bed at night, you're what my family has in their nighmares. Of course I know you, Angel. Ask me another question."
"What are you doing here?"
"Doing what I've been doing the past eight years."
"And that is?"
"Protecting you."
She couldn't possibly. He almost laughed, because it was laughable.
She smiled, understanding his disbelief. "OK, I can see how you won't be hiring me as your bodyguard anytime soon. And I don't really think you'll believe me if I tell you. Can you lie back against the couch please?"
"What are you --"
"Trust me. I told you, you need to settle down."
Angel made a mental note of where his extra stake was lodged in his boot, though he doubted he'd need it. He leaned back against the couch, letting his head rest on one of the arms. Aurora crossed the space between them.
"This won't hurt a bit," she said, kneeling in front of him, touching his forehead with her hand. Soft fingertips lightly against his skin.
He didn't think he would be touching her, and for a split second he resisted her, but then he felt it.
Or rather, saw it.
Like in his dream, he saw his life from eight years in the past, only now he was watching it in the third person. A blur of images moving quickly past him, but he was seeing it all.
New York. Starving, thirsty, hungry. Whistler.
LA. His first look at Buffy.
Sunnydale. First settling in. Falling in love. Turning into Angelus. Being sent to hell. Returning from it.
LA again. The old Angel Investigations office. Doyle. Kate. The hotel.
And then finally, the jazz bar.
Aurora was there, she was all there.
There was also fear. Hiding. Isolation. The feeling that people were hiding in the dark ready to pounce.
She removed her hand and the visions went away.
"You were there," he managed to choke out.
"Everywhere you were." She affirmed.
"How did I ... how did I not know?"
"Cloaking spells. Sometimes good old fashioned hiding." Aurora returned to her seat as Angel struggled to sit up. "You understand now?"
"Give me minute... my life just flashed before my eyes here." He was dizzy, eight years of cloaking spells lifting themselves right off him. "But I do, I do understand."
"Oh good. Great." She sighed in relief.
Timeline: Somewhere after Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. Charles Gunn doesn't appear, because I couldn't figure out how to fit him in.
Please send feedback to slayerbelle@go.com
Protection
by Slayerbelle
Chapter 1 - In Dreams
He dreamed about her only once, which didn't make up for the lifetime she'd devoted to him.
He was in New York again, walking through the same foggy alleys. Only this time he walked them with no blinding hunger. He was himself, souled, tortured, but with a purpose, watching his old New York. There was music in his ear, like the dream had a soundtrack, punctuating his every step, his every movement. There was a woman singing the song in his head, and if he had bothered to stop and listen he was sure she was saying something relevant.
And then he saw her. Not the source of the music in his head, but another girl entirely, standing under a street light at an empty intersection. Dark haired, petite, strangely familiar, though he was certain he had never seen her before.
Something moved before his eyes and he blinked. Suddenly he was in his old house -- the abandoned mansion in Sunnydale. It was empty, but exactly as he had left it, like he was still in it. She was there, standing near the fireplace, right about where the chains hung from a metal ring in the ceiling. He approached her, tentatively.
"Do I know you?" he asked.
In a second his eyes seemed to shift and now he was in the Bronze, the way it was when he first came to Sunnydale years ago. He and the girl, looking at him in earnest now, standing still, ignored, in the middle of a packed dance floor.
"You don't recognize me." Her voice dripped of regret, but she was smiling.
"I don't."
"It's OK." She moved closer to him, and he noticed that he was going to whisper something in his ear. She lifted herself up on her toes. He met her halfway by bending down.
Her lips barely brushed his ear, moving in words that he couldn't hear. She finished what she said and straightened up. He wanted to ask her to say it again, he didn't hear her, and then he noticed that her left hand was concealed behind her back.
She recoiled it and in one brisk motion plunged a stake into his heart.
====
As if to punctuate his primal scream at being dusted by the girl, he awoke to the more feminine scream emanating from downstairs, followed by a metallic crash.
Heart, chest, limbs, check. Made a quick inventory before throwing himself out of bed to check on Cordelia. He secretly hoped she didn't have visions on the Ming vase he on a whim set atop the coffee table last week.
By the time he got to her, she was trying to lift herself up onto the sofa.
"Cordy."
"This is a totally wrong place for a coffee table! You know I almost banged my head on that ugly blue urn?"
"Yeah, I'm glad it's OK."
Off her glare, he amended his relief. "I mean, I'm glad you're OK. That you didn't hit the expensive urn and all."
"No thanks to you, Sleepy Boy."
"Do you need anything? Water?"
She gestured toward the spot where she was lying prone in just a second ago. "A nice little bean bag right *there* would have been perfect. No, I'm fine." Cordelia settled down into the couch and caught her breath. "It's a night club."
"What you saw?"
"The one we were just in last week -- I remember the aftertaste of the bad vodka and mixed nuts."
"This is the one near the beach?"
"Jazz At Harold's. Creepy valet. That's it." A few deep breaths and Cordelia was getting back on Cordy mode. "There's a girl. Brunette, little cheeky, long hair, she gets attacked by something. Why did you scream?"
"What?"
"I heard you just now. Right before my head was chopped from the inside by my own PTB-sponsored ax. You screamed, I thought you were in trouble."
"Bad dream."
"Oh." Cordelia paused. Angel was never one to share, but she always gave him the obligatory pause before pouncing. "What exactly are bad dreams for you, anyway? I mean, monsters and demons are your normal life, so your nightmares would have to be... fluffy bunnies?"
"A girl staked me."
Her eyebrows twitched. "Slayer?"
"No. Just a girl."
====
He didn't care if the vodka was bad, he couldn't taste it anyway.
Angel scanned the moving bodies across the room, most of them couples paired off now, dancing slowly to the music of the handsome guy working the saxophone. Sexy music. If any girl was to be attacked, it would be after this song. He was almost certain her predator would be dancing with her right now, luring her into leaving the place with him after a few strategically placed hands and looks, a few hours of talking and a few glasses of bad liquor. This was that kind of place.
No one was leaving the dance floor yet.
He turned around, motioned the bartender to give him another round. He'd been waiting for an hour and still nothing, was already on his third drink. Cordelia should probably have given him a time. He didn't exactly bring enough cash for an all-night drinking spree.
A Scotch this time. Straight. The glass was filled up in front of him, he lifted it up to the bartender and downed it in one swoop.
And then he saw her. It was a quick, split-second reflection in the glass, but he saw her and he knew it was her.
Across the room, the other side of the dance floor, looking at him, was the girl from his dream. A dancing couple moved in front of her and Angel craned his neck to catch another view of her, but she was gone.
Weird, he thought to himself. He stood up from the bar stool, half ready to chase. He knew from experience that he shouldn't ignore his dreams, and that in his life coincidences were rare and far between. He crossed the dance floor, recalling in his head now if he had smelled her in his dream, because that would have made her easier to follow. He caught another scent instead.
Vampire. From the dance floor, leading a blonde out into the alley.
He hesitated. *Cordelia said brunette, and she won't be wrong about that.* But an assault was an assault, a vamp attack still a vamp attack.
Angel stepped out into the alley just in time to catch the vamp sinking his fangs onto the girl.
He tapped the vamp on the shoulder. "Mind if I cut in?"
The vamp was as pissed as anyone rudely interrupted in the middle of a great meal. "Mind your own business, Soul Boy."
Later on, it occurred to him that he should have asked about the origin of that comment. Would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. Instead, he chose this moment to skip the formalities, pull the well-dressed vamp from the blonde, and stake him.
The blonde gasped and ran away at his request, but the vamp, two seconds later, was still twitching on the floor, stake impaled in his chest.
"Damn, I missed." He said softly, but did not make a move, instead watched as the injured vamp's corpse twitched in pain. He knew from experience that this was a pain like no other -- like you were dying, only that pesky immortality thing just kicks in, and the pain never fades, it just goes on forever. Until someone un-impales you so you can heal.
Times like these he felt Angelus was not really gone, just lurking, because there was no reason for his strange fascination with the demon's pain.
A scream, a woman's scream, pierced the air. It was coming from around the corner. The brunette scheduled for saving, perhaps? Angel ran to check, turned the corner, into... nothing. The alley was empty.
*I'm really off my game tonight,* he murmured, casually flipping the stake he had whipped out in his hand. Maybe Cordelia got the hair color wrong, maybe he really did save who he was supposed to save tonight. Might as well make one clean sweep and return home.
Or not. As Angel returned to the alley where he staked well-dressed vamp, he saw a girl, *the* girl, leaning over him. He quickly hid behind the corner wall, unseen, watching as she removed the stake from the vamp's chest.
The vamp kept on writhing, still in pain (a hole in your chest can do that to you). The girl placed a hand against his shoulder to suppress his jerking about and held another hand against his wound. Angel saw a green light emanate from her palm, a soft green glow that was like energy flowing into the vampire.
Who stood up two seconds later and scampered off.
*She healed him,* he thought incredulously. He thought it was impossible. Not only that, she had healed a vampire wearing his monster face, so she knew what she was doing.
Shoes on pavement echoed in the alley. She threw a couple of cautious glances his way, and then started in the other direction.
*Oh no you don't.*
It was almost a growl. He sprang forward, soon outrunning her with his demon speed. She seemed to sense he was coming and whirled around, unafraid. His hand found her arm and grabbed, pushed her back against the wall.
"Who are you?" He demanded.
It wasn't just about the vamp healing now. They locked eyes and he knew it was her.
"You recognize me?" she said, voice cracking because of the pressure of the wall against her lungs, not from fear.
"Who are you?"
"It's better if you just let me go, Angel."
She staked him in his dream. She healed a vampire who almost killed a girl. Now he was pushing her against the wall she felt small, fragile, except for those steely eyes that didn't waver.
Should he be afraid of her? She had power, he could sense it now, being close enough to feel her pulse. It was different.
"You tell me who you are and we'll decide what's better for everyone," he hissed.
She was stoic. Almost unfeeling. He moved his hand to her throat, pushed her back against the wall again.
"Angel--" She started to protest again, but then stopped. Resolved to do as he asked. "My name is Aurora."
"Is that supposed to mean anything to me?"
"Aurora of the Kalderash people."
====
Pffffoooey.
Not only was the coffee ickily lukewarm, there was too much water in the coffee maker in the first place so it might as well have been brewed water with a caffeine aftertaste.
Cordelia tossed her cup back in the sink. The faucet started running seemingly on its own, the cup rinsing itself clean.
"Dennis! You didn't have to. But next time use lemon fresh!"
She realized it was Friday, and maybe she should have gone with Angel to the jazz bar. Bad vodka or not, she needed to get out more, she was starting to get those pangs of inadequacy again. Not like she could ask Wesley out again, because that would be just desperate and weird. At least when she was with Angel she got jealous glares from every other woman in the joint. That clears those inadequacy issues right up quick.
Maybe it's not too late, she thought, lifting a hand to grab her coat. Maybe I can still catch him and get a few nasty glares before midnight.
It hit her, again, before her hand touched the coat, missing it entirely now as she fell to floor, on the pillow that Dennis quickly slipped under her before she hurt herself.
Not the visions again. This didn't happen to her, not twice in the same day, not twice about the same person. But it was like another scene from a Tarantino flick -- quick cuts, jumpy music, the same bar, the same girl, only she could see now who attacked her, who had her by her throat against the wall.
Angel.
Her sudden intake of breath became a gasp. Reeling from the attack, trying to get her wits back as the pain subsided, Cordelia grabbed the phone.
What the hell was that about? Angel was supposed to be saving the girl, not -- unless, of course, that wasn't Angel.
"Wesley!" she said. "Meet me at the hotel. No, in front of it. And stock up for the Big Contingency."
====
She looked nothing like Jenny Calendar but he believed her. Her features were so far removed from the gypsy family he had tortured he wouldn't have guessed, but she did have their blood coursing through her and he could feel it.
He loosened up on her throat, just a little. "You worried about me turning again? I'd think your family would be off the hook by now, 'cause the curse this time around was performed by--"
"Willow Rosenberg in Sunnydale. I know."
"What?"
"Please let go of me."
Angel released her, and she straightened up, but didn't even blink. "Why?" he asked.
"Where do you want me to begin?"
"Why were you in my dream?"
For the first time since they'd met, she seemed to be taken aback. It took her a beat to digest this, and then she laughed. "OK, I did not see that one coming."
"Then let's start with the simple questions shall we? Why do you know me?"
"Can we go back to your office? You probably need to sit down for this."
====
When they entered what was formerly known as the Hyperion Hotel, he noticed that she paused for a second at the door. She looked the place up, down, around, and kind of sighed.
"I've never really been in here before," she said softly, as if sensing he had noticed her reaction to the place. "I mean, like this."
They sat in silence the entire twenty-minute drive from the Jazz At Harold's bar to the hotel. Aurora had preferred not to say anything until he "had settled down."
He had taken a softer tone with her. She didn't look like she was going to attack him, nor did he feel like restraining her. She just looked... well, normal. She couldn't have been taller than Buffy, or thinner. In her early twenties. He sensed something strong in her, but not power the way Buffy was a Slayer, not the way Willow was a witch.
He couldn't put his finger on it.
Now they were in his home, his office, and he was wondering whether he should offer her coffee.
"Where would you like me to sit?" he asked.
She pointed to the couches on their receiving area. "This should do just fine. You're not mocking me, are you?"
"Listen, I don't know who you are--"
"I know. You don't. You shouldn't." She watched him pick a couch and settle down before she sat right across from him. Drawing a breath all of a sudden, she exhaled it slow and ragged. "I don't know where to start. Too long a story, too many subplots. Ask me what's most bothering you first."
"OK. Question number 1. Why do you know me?"
She shook her head. "That's easy. I'm from the Kalderash family, Angel. We know you better than we know our own kind. You're the story they tell to put us to bed at night, you're what my family has in their nighmares. Of course I know you, Angel. Ask me another question."
"What are you doing here?"
"Doing what I've been doing the past eight years."
"And that is?"
"Protecting you."
She couldn't possibly. He almost laughed, because it was laughable.
She smiled, understanding his disbelief. "OK, I can see how you won't be hiring me as your bodyguard anytime soon. And I don't really think you'll believe me if I tell you. Can you lie back against the couch please?"
"What are you --"
"Trust me. I told you, you need to settle down."
Angel made a mental note of where his extra stake was lodged in his boot, though he doubted he'd need it. He leaned back against the couch, letting his head rest on one of the arms. Aurora crossed the space between them.
"This won't hurt a bit," she said, kneeling in front of him, touching his forehead with her hand. Soft fingertips lightly against his skin.
He didn't think he would be touching her, and for a split second he resisted her, but then he felt it.
Or rather, saw it.
Like in his dream, he saw his life from eight years in the past, only now he was watching it in the third person. A blur of images moving quickly past him, but he was seeing it all.
New York. Starving, thirsty, hungry. Whistler.
LA. His first look at Buffy.
Sunnydale. First settling in. Falling in love. Turning into Angelus. Being sent to hell. Returning from it.
LA again. The old Angel Investigations office. Doyle. Kate. The hotel.
And then finally, the jazz bar.
Aurora was there, she was all there.
There was also fear. Hiding. Isolation. The feeling that people were hiding in the dark ready to pounce.
She removed her hand and the visions went away.
"You were there," he managed to choke out.
"Everywhere you were." She affirmed.
"How did I ... how did I not know?"
"Cloaking spells. Sometimes good old fashioned hiding." Aurora returned to her seat as Angel struggled to sit up. "You understand now?"
"Give me minute... my life just flashed before my eyes here." He was dizzy, eight years of cloaking spells lifting themselves right off him. "But I do, I do understand."
"Oh good. Great." She sighed in relief.