Who Is Real And Who Is Not
Author: Nitrowugs
Rating: T
Pairings: None
Feedback: Please. Constructive criticism is always welcomed and appreciated.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with BtVS and AtS. Characters, plots and dialogue from the shows are borrowed with no infringement intent whatsoever.
Distribution: Please ask and let me know where it's going.
Written: 01/13/2015
Summary: AU fic. Buffy hasn't been seen in California in years. She pays a visit to her old friends at Angel Investigations.
Warning: In this story Faith is working for the bad guy.
A/N1: BTVS happened through the end of the series.
A/N2: AtS happened through the end of season 4 except that all members of AI are alive and well, no Cordelia as a higher being, no Cordelia/Connor affair, no Angel lusting after Cordelia.
A/N3: Thoughts are in single quotes (' ')
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Buffy was on a much needed vacation from her assignment with the All Worlds Police (AWP) and was in California visiting friends. Her first stop was Los Angeles, even though she really didn't want to go there. She did not want to have to face Angel. She hadn't heard from him since their fight with the First Evil except to let him know that a second front would not be necessary and to thank him for his help with the amulet that was instrumental in their success.
Angel had not been at all happy when Spike was chosen to wear the amulet instead of him and she could tell by his coolness on the phone that he was still ticked off about it. That was years ago and she just hoped that Angel had gotten over his anger and jealousy.
She was certain that she was doing the right thing. If anyone could pull this off, she could. She walked into the Hyperion Hotel smartly dressed in a dark green suit and shoes, pale green and tan silk blouse and gold jewelry. She carried a brief case and a purse.
"Hello, welcome to Angel Investigations, how can we help you?"
She was greeted by a friendly looking woman with brown hair and a slim build.
"I'm looking for Angel; is he here?"
"He is, but he's in a meeting right now. Is there something I can help you with?"
Before she could reply, Cordelia and Gunn entered the lobby. Cordelia recognized her old friend right away. "Oh my gods. Buffy! What are you doing here? It's been ages." She surprised Buffy with a hug which was readily returned.
"Hey, Cordy, how are you?"
"Fine, fine. You haven't aged a day."
"Hah, just don't look too closely; the crows feet tell a different story.
"Gunn, what are you doing here?"
"Hey, Squirt. I didn't even recognize you. You're all grown up."
"Will you stop calling me that wretched name," she demanded of Gunn. "You haven't grown up at all," she laughed and threw herself into Gunn's arms.
Wesley heard her voice and came out of one of the offices. He greeted her with a hug. "Buffy, how nice to see you."
"Wesley! I hardly recognized you. Looks good on you."
Wesley actually blushed.
"Now there's the Wesley I remember," she teased.
They introduced Fred.
The four of them continued their 'get reacquainted banter' until Angel heard the laughter and came out of his office. She could tell by the look on his face that he was not too happy to see her.
Without greeting her, he asked stonily, "What're you doing here?"
She felt as though he had doused her with ice water; she recovered quickly and simply stated her reason for being there. "I'm here on official business. Is there some place where we can talk in private?"
His reply was as cold as his non-greeting. "This way. The rest of you, join us." He then turned and walked back toward his office, obviously expecting the others to follow.
Angel took the chair at the large desk as Wesley closed the door behind them and offered Buffy a seat. She held up an index finger indicating that everyone was to be quiet. She took out some kind of electronic device from her purse and held it up as she slowly turned in a circle. Every few seconds she pressed a button on the device and a short 'sssp' could be heard. She then pointed the device directly at Angel's desk, pressed the button and the 'sssp' sound was heard twice. She returned the device to her purse and sat down.
"Now we can talk."
"What the hell was that?" Angel glared daggers at what he considered someone that he used to know.
"The office was bugged; it had two cameras and several listening devices. I got rid of them. I didn't want anyone recording what I have to say."
"Well, now that you're through playing super spy, are you going to tell me what this 'official business' is that brought you here?" Angel almost spat the words. He did not want Buffy to see just how disturbed he was, both by her presence and the fact that his office was bugged.
Cordelia was as shocked by his attitude as Buffy was. "Angel, what is the matter with you?"
"Stay out of this, Cordy."
"Why did you ask us to come into this office if you didn't want us involved?"
"It's okay, Cordy. I'll get right to the reason for my visit." She turned to what seemed to be a stranger across the desk from her. "Angel, when was the last time you were outside the Americas?"
"What? What business is that of yours? You know what? Get out of my office, and get out of my hotel."
Buffy stood and picked up her purse and brief case. "You want me out? Fine, I'll get out; but before I do, you tell me this." She opened her brief case, pulled out a large brown envelope and threw a pile of photographs onto the desk. "Which one of these men is the real you?"
Angel picked up the photos and stared at them.
"Well?"
"What do you mean? They all look like me."
"Really? When was the last time you were in China?"
She grabbed the photos from his hand and slammed the top one down on the desk.
"In Poland?"
She slammed down the next one.
"Paris?" The next one.
"Huh Angel? When were you in these places? Tell me, because I took these pictures myself." She slammed down the rest of the photos.
"That's impossible."
"Is it? Look at the backgrounds. Look at how the people are dressed and you tell me where they were taken and whether or not they're all you."
All this time the other members of AI watched the exchange between the two, not saying a word until Cordy reached over and picked up the photos from the desk.
"They do all look like you, Angel."
He lost some of his bravado. "I don't understand. Buffy, what is going on?"
She took a few deep breaths trying to calm herself before speaking again. Here she was trying to get him to trust her and he came on with a damn attitude. She considered picking up her photos and walking right out the door, but she knew that that behavior would be as childish as the one Angel displayed. She forced herself to speak calmly.
"As far as authorities have been able to determine, there are at least five other men parading around the world pretending to be you - and from what we have determined, they are identical to you. They have the same finger prints, voice print, not just the same blood type but the same blood, hell they even have your tattoo. They have residences and families in major countries around the world. They have money stashed in various countries amounting to several hundred billion dollars, all in various currencies; and that is just what we know about so far; and that doesn't include the money that Angelus stashed away. This accumulation of money started six months after you became human; so you see, it could not be Angelus. The few millions that he stored away amount to peanuts compared to what these guys have. They are into drugs, military weapons, identity theft, white slave trade and every other vile enterprise you can name. I don't know who it is that you have pissed off, but they are serious about having your ass executed, legally, for all the world to see. Now you tell me who has that kind of power other than the Senior Partners."
The others in the room looked surprised. What did she know about the Senior Partners?
"These wannabes that you have been dealing with at Wolfram & Hart are nothing compared to the real Senior Partners. The Circle of the Black Thorn, The New Red West, the Immortal are all a bunch of puppets compared to them. The Senior Partners that you know of, who are responsible for controlling this dimension, are distant offspring of the real Partners, who have various sets of their offspring controlling most of earth's dimensions. So far I have been the only person that has been able to tell these men from the real you; that is because I can still feel you. I cannot feel them."
Angel tried to look into her eyes, but she carefully avoided him. He wondered since she arrived if their connection was still as strong with her as it was with him.
"That is the only reason I am here - to stop them from executing the real you before we can find out who created them and how, and also who else they have cloned, if that's even the right word."
Cordelia finally recovered from shock and regained her composure. "Buffy, what are you? FBI? CIA? What?"
"Neither. And don't even ask me that."
She turned to Angel. "You remember that party that you attended about seven, no eight, months ago that was given by your friend, David Nabbits?"
Angel nodded briefly but didn't openly answer.
"At the same time that you were downstairs dancing with Nabbits' sister, one of your doubles was in another part of the house breaking into Nabbits' personal computer system. I'm sure that you heard about the robberies he's been having and how some of his company has been stolen right from under him. Well according to his personal security systems, you are responsible for most of that."
Angel was outraged, but also afraid. She could hear it in his voice. "What? No. I would never ..."
She saw his bewilderment, his despair and said softly, "I know Angel, but my bosses don't. And who can argue with fingerprints. There are a lot of things that a criminal can fake, fingerprints and blood are not among them. It's not just blood type; they have a data base of people that they suspect, for whatever reason, and they have them typed down to the cellular level. They can single these people out from any other person on this planet using only a drop of their blood. Unfortunately, your duplicates have the exact same blood that you have because they were home grown from your blood."
"Did the Powers That Be do this when they made me human?"
"You think the Powers did this? Are you mad? The Powers didn't make you human, because you're not human."
Cordy stepped in at this point. "Now you're the one who's mad, Buffy. Of course he's human."
She ignored Cordelia and spoke directly to Angel. "What did you do with the Gem of Amara that I sent to you? You crushed it, right? What did you do with the crushed pieces of the Gem?"
"Nothing; it shattered into dust."
"And you just left the dust there? That dust still had the properties of the Gem. It was collected. And used. Against you." She pointed at him for emphasis. "That same powder is in you. As for how you are sustained without blood, your food supply is treated with a concentrated blood chemical that will sustain you for months and will also keep Angelus dormant. Have you ever noticed that sometimes you start getting weak without explanation, until you have consumed certain foods - then you are fine again?"
Cordelia perked up. "Angel I told you something was wrong with you and you wouldn't listen to me. You thought it was a leftover symptom from being a vamp."
Buffy continued her explanation of what she knew.
"Shortly after you destroyed the Gem, did you ever notice that some of the vamps that you fought, you were unable to kill?"
Angel nodded.
"That's because they had a small amount of the powder in them somehow, I don't really know how that is done.
"You got stabbed in a fight one night and the next morning you woke up completely healed and human. Didn't that seem at all odd to you?"
"I was so happy to be human, it didn't occur to me to be suspicious."
"You were taken to a hospital and operated on; implants were installed to make it appear that your heart and other body functions were working normally, and they put some of the powder under your skin somewhere within the area occupied by your tattoo; they then returned you to the alley where you were stabbed and left you there. A few weeks later you were injured and taken to a hospital, remember that? That's when they took your blood samples, while you were unconscious."
"That doesn't make sense, Buffy," Wesley told her; "why didn't they just take the samples while they had him the first time?"
She gave a long sigh. These guys really didn't know what was going on, did they?
"The only blood in his body at the time was whatever he had been living off; they replaced as much as possible with synthetic blood, but they had to wait to see how that new blood would migrate over time as he ate different foods and consumed various liquids. Once his blood was stable, then they needed the samples for his clones. So far, that is all we know about how the process works. Do they use altered human bodies, are they grown in a laboratory, I don't know. What I do know is that these developers have this process down to what seems to be an exact science.
"It really shouldn't surprise me though; look at what the monks were able to do with Dawn."
"You say I have wives and families around the world, do they know they are not my children?"
"No. As far as they are concerned, their husband and father is Angelus O'Rouke. None of the families are aware of the others and each of the Angelus clones has memories unique to himself.
"Judging by your reactions today you knew nothing about any of this."
Cordelia and Wesley assured her that her assumption was correct. All of this was news to them. Angel didn't say anything at first, but she could tell by the firm set of his jaw that what was coming would not be very pleasant.
"So what now, Buffy? Do you just ride off into the sunset without a backward glance and nobody hears from you again?"
Cordelia had had enough. She lashed out with, "Angel, what the hell is the matter with you? We obviously need help and from where I'm sitting, it looks like Buffy is the only help we have."
Completely ignoring Cordelia, Angel continued glaring at Buffy and asked, "Well, Buffy?"
She also had had enough of Angel's attitude, so she came back with a dig of her own. "No Angel, I'm not riding off into the sunset. That's your gig. Only it wasn't sunset, was it? It was smoke. Remember?"
Her words hit him harder than he expected because that was the last thing he had expected her to say. He knew that he had hurt Buffy deeply when he left Sunnydale, but it wasn't until this moment that he realized how deeply the hurt went. After all these years, she still felt the pain. Of course he knew she would never admit it, but he could tell from the sound of her voice and the look in her eyes that it wasn't only anger that she was feeling, it was deep seated pain and sorrow that had never healed.
"Would you two get over yourselves? We are in trouble here." Cordelia turned to her former classmate. "Buffy, can you help us? What should we do?"
"Well, one thing I suggest you do is have a security expert check out the entire hotel and also any other residences that you all have. I am sure those are bugged as well."
"We should also include Lorne's club and his apartment," Gunn suggested.
"I didn't know Lorne was still in LA. How's he doing?"
"He's fine."
"How do you know Lorne?" Wesley wanted to know.
She laughed. "I grew up in LA. I met Lorne when he heard me singing at a karaoke and tried to have me kicked out for being underage. He didn't know that I was there with my parents and friends for my fifteenth birthday party."
A wicked thought hit her and she turned to Angel. "You can have him come here and I will sing for him if you want to verify that I am not lying."
"Of course you're not lying," Gunn defended her. "Who here thinks you would make up something like that?" He challenged everyone there, specifically Angel.
Cordelia and Wesley readily agreed with Gunn. Fred did as well, even though she had just met Buffy. Only Angel remained quiet until everyone turned to him.
"I don't believe a word you've said."
The person standing outside the door, listening, had heard enough.
"And well you shouldn't."
The voice came from the doorway. All heads turned around to see Buffy standing there.
"What the hell is going on?" Cordy demanded.
The others were too dumfounded to speak.
"That's Buffy," Angel said, pointing to the person standing in the doorway; "I don't know who in hell this is," indicating the person sitting in the chair.
The "Buffy" in the chair took out the same electronic device she had used earlier and pressed a button on it. The glamour fell away and left Faith sitting in the chair with a big Cheshire cat grin on her face.
"So, B, you finally caught me. Took you long enough. You never give up, do you?"
"No," Buffy said; "I don't." She turned and walked away as Council retrieval team members approached the office.
"Buffy..." Angel rose from his desk and called after her.
She stopped and turned to face him.
When he caught up with her, he asked, "How much of what Faith said is true?"
"Very little, the part about the Gem and other vamps using the dust. That is all. There are no clones, no money stashed around the world, we're not aware of any crimes that you may have committed and you are completely human."
"Why did she do this?"
"The Immortal has, had, several slayers working for him, pretending to be me. Faith was the last of them. We've already captured the others."
She turned to walk away.
"Buffy, please don't go. Please. I didn't believe that she was you when she walked in here; I just didn't know if I could still trust my instincts regarding you. It's been so long..."
"I know it's been a long time, Angel, but I will always trust my instincts where you are concerned."
Even though she hadn't moved, he could feel her pulling away from him. He couldn't let her go without knowing.
"Buffy, are you still my girl?"
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek and said, "Angel, I will always be your girl."
The end