Hello! this is dimsel speaking! procyon and I started writing this story in JULY but other stuff got in the way so it's been sitting in my hard drive for quite some time. This first bit is almost entirely 'cy's but since I posted it I get to write the intro! yay. the next chapter will most likely be mine, the next hers and so on.
Anyways we do not own any ANGEL or BUFFY characters, so don't sue us. We're from Canada so there wouldn't be much money anyways.
ENJOY!
CITY OF... INSANITY
Voice over (Angel): "Los Angeles. You see it at night and it shines. Like a beacon. People are drawn to it.
People and other things. They come for all sorts of reasons. My reason was a girl. But now, my reason is
gone, leaving in it's place something very wrong with the universe... and the very wrong's reason for coming
here was, well, me. Sorry... "
Scene: a quiet-looking family neighborhood. Zoom in on a house with kids running around in the front, and two young
women chasing after them.
Angel: "Actually, there were three very wrongs. One was very nice for a very wrong, though, couldn't have
met a nicer person if you tried. You couldn't tell that by looking- you kinda have to smell it out."
The brunette, who has effectively captured two of the kids and is carrying one piggyback, heads back inside
the house while the redhead keeps chasing a small blonde boy around the neighborhood's cul-de-sac. She
looks exhausted and trips over a large rock, making her fall flat on her face. The woman pushes herself up just in
time to see the boy run right in front of a car, which is pulling into the driveway. The car slams on its' brakes with
a squeal, missing the boy, who becomes terrified and darts into the house, yelling for his mother.
A man steps out of the car and walks over to the woman, offering her a hand up: "Are you alright, Pip?"
She looks up at him with a very hurt face: "Lucius hates me. How can I take care of a kid that absolutely hates
me? He has no respect for authority, everything in my apartment is 'weird', and Lindsay is his favorite person in
the world."
The guy gives her a humored look. "Sounds like a miniature of you. I was talking about your health, actually.
You're running outside in the sun. You'll die like that."
"Right."
The woman takes his offered arm and hurries back inside. Once in the house, the brunette comes marching up
again, with the other two children clinging to her hands. Lucius is nowhere to be seen.
"What on earth was that, Piper? You almost killed a kid you've had for barely a week!"
"Pip's getting in trou-ble!" one of the little girls attached to the woman's hand mocks.
Piper shakes out her red hair in an effort to hide her even redder face. "I shouldn't have been out in the sun. It's
too much for me."
"Stop being such a baby. It's not like you're a vampire or anything, Piper. Really, you ought to grow up. Look at
me, I'm taking care of the MacLellan's kids for them this afternoon-" the girls beam innocently, then stick their
tongues out at Piper when nobody is looking- "and here's our punctual neighbourhood handyman. Hi, Steven."
Steven makes the face of one being force-fed mud when the little girls repeat 'Hello, Steven' sweetly. "I'm going
to check on Lucius, and apologise. Pip, come with me... Where is he, Linds?"
Lindsay sighs impatiently. "Upstairs. Little brat kid."
Steve and Piper head down a hall and up the stairs. Distinct sniffling is coming from the master bedroom, and
Piper nods to let her companion know that she'll go in first. Steve wanders around the top floor as she opens the
door, a kind smile pasted on her face-
-and is met by a pool of blood. Horrified, Piper rushes over to the bed, where Lucius is lying facedown. She
shakes the young boy by his shoulders, but he keeps crying and when Piper takes her hands away she notices
bloodstains on them. Shaken, she turns him around. There are two large puncture wounds on his neck.
"Lucius! Luc, what happened? Was it the car?"
The boy's eyes are round and terrified. He shakes his head and raises a weak finger to point behind Piper. She
turns around and sees nothing there.
"Steve?!" she yells. "Steve!"
Steve enters, takes one look at the scene in front of him and turns a shade of green usually found on vegetables.
Piper opens her mouth to speak as Steve turns back around. There is something behind him, though, and it
talks in a harsh voice.
"You should never have started inventing demons, Steven."
Piper crouches next to the bed and holds a terrified Lucius in her arms as the thing slashes Steve across the
throat. He falls, noiselessly and lifelessly, to the blood-soaked carpet. The figure moves over to Piper, and she
can see that it is not human, but very ugly and trollish. It raises a hand with long, sharp nails to her throat, but is
interrupted by Piper screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Shut up and die," the creature laughs, as Lindsay runs through the doorway. She distracts the creature, since it
turns around, but instead of getting angry, it laughs. Lindsay continues to stand there, horrified, as the creature
takes a long sword out of nowhere.
"This is the Sword of Eternal Nightmares. I truly hope you like what you become," it laughs again, and sticks
Lindsay with the sword. She simply disappears, and Piper clutches Lucius to her back as she stands and
faces the monster. Before a plea for life can escape her lips, the sword runs through both her and the small
boy.
Angel: And that about brings us up to speed. Too bad I didn't know all of this before, could have saved a lot of
trouble. Not to mention the cost of cleaning blood out of carpets... You'd think there would be a frequent
users discount or something. I mean, it's L.A.!
Cut to intro scene
End intro, cut to a view of green sheets that suddenly sit up straight and look around.
It was to the sound of snoring that Lindsay awoke; her bed seemed warmer than usual, somehow. Sometime
in the night she
had woken up feeling a sharp pain in her midsection, but had fallen back to sleep in no time and began to
dream. You know the average just-out-of-high-school twenty-year-old dreams: fame, fortune, and guys - though
not necessarily in that order. In this particular dream, she dreamt that Mrs MacLellan came to collect her kids as
usual, but then a scream came from upstairs. Lindsay went to investigate, and ended up being run through with
a bloody sword. Lovely.
Suddenly her alarm went off, its blaring monotonous beep cutting though her sleep-induced fog. As she
slammed her hand down on
it with annoyance, she realized that the covers were still over her head. She removed them slowly, then a thought
struck her- literally. Someone kicked her thigh... There was another body in this bed, which she realize was, in
fact, not even her bed. Her first
thought was along the lines of her drinking habit having something to do with this.
"This time, I am going to swear off of alcohol for good," she grumbled to herself as she turned over, ready for
anything from cute to ugly. Anything except for what she saw, of course.
"What the hell?" she whispers to herself. The sleeping face which she came upon was extremely handsome,
and somehow very familiar.
Her bed buddy opened his eyes slowly and groggily, rubbing his forehead. "Wha-What's wrong?!"
"You- you- who are you? Help! Help me!" she yelled. The last time this had happened- or had it been a dream-
she'd been attacked with a knife.
"Who?" the handsome man said, "I don't know who you' re talking about! It's me, Lindsay, Angel."
"Angel? Yes, well, I may have said things when I was drunk last night, but... " Lindsay paused a moment. Her
mind was a fog of memories and dreams, and she couldn't tell which were real.
"Are you having a episode?" Angel asked tentitively. "God, I hope not. Look Linds, I don't know what the
problem is, you' ve know
for quite some time that I'm a vampire, in fact, ever since we started going out ... "
Lindsay thought that if this was real, it was the sort of real that you see when under the influence. There was
something floating around in her head, though. "Oh, uh, right, yeah! I knew that! It was just, uh, morning
amnesia," Lindsay quickly covered, after all, she didn't want him to think she was nuts. He was scary, though. A
vampire? Named Angel? Who was her boyfriend?! Oh wow.
Just about the time that Angel accepted her pathetic cover-up and Lindsay began thinking some very unholy
thoughts about the
mysterious disappearance of her clothes, the door opened with a bang. A brunette, fashionably clad, and a
preppily dressed man
clambered into the room, both carrying crossbows.
Lindsay screamed and flapped her arms, scooting backwards into her bedmate.
"Don't worry, guys- we'll save you!" the man said with a thick British accent.
"Wesley! Get out!" Angel roared, frantically trying to cover certain exposed body parts of Lindsay's, since she
had stopped screaming and flapping to stare open-mouthed at the people at the door.
"We're fine," he continued. "Do you mind? Cordelia?"
"Oh sorry," Cordelia, the brunette, said as she averted her eyes, "'we thought that Ip was trying to kill you."
"No we're fine, uh thanks," Lindsay offered all the while wondering what the heck Ip was.
"Well, then, I guess we'll be on our way..." The door clicked behind them.
"Are you really fine?" asked Angel.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure," Lindsay answered. There were two distinct worlds in her mind: one where she lived in a
quiet town and babysat absolute brats, and one where she lived in L.A. with her boyfriend and a vampire that
was out to kill her. She looked at her left arm, the one that she had been knifed on in the quiet town. There was
no scar, nothing... She sighed and laid back down in bed, deciding that sometimes dreams were just a bit too
real.
Cut to another room, this one pitch-black. We see moonlight streaming through the window, however, and can see
what is going on inside.
Piper awoke to the sound of absolute nothingness. She groaned and attempted to turn over and go back to
sleep, but her hand was stuck under something heavy. She assumed that Lucius had had a bad dream and was
in her bed again, since she couldn't see squat. Finally she ended up just laying there and staring at the ceiling.
Her room was a lot darker and colder than she remembered, but then again it was early- hence the moonlight-
and she'd probably fallen asleep with the window wide open. Not bale to stand it any longer, Piper gave a hard
yank and disloged her hand from its' surroundings, half thinking of getting up and making brownies. Lucius loved
brownies.
"Hey, wha'd you do that for?"
She paused in mid-yawn. Someone with a voice that was not Lucius' had just said something. Deciding she had
fallen back asleep, Piper pinched herself as hard as she could on the wrist, but immediately regretted that when
a sharp sting and warm sensation told her that her wrist was bleeding.
"Oh, hell," she whispered, forgetting about everything else and concentrating on sucking the blood off of her
hand before it could hit
the nice, new, white covers. Her foot began itching, and for a lack of hands she kicked out, hoping to make the
itch stop. Instead of the desired effect, Piper's foot hit something warm and soft, producing a yelp from her right
side.
The yelp, she decided, was not a dream, especially not when accompanied by her sore wrist. She couldn't quite
remember what she'd done last night, but hopefully that was just Lucius. Piper had nearly convinced herself of
that before the voice spoke again.
"Hey, what's with the kicking? If you wanted to do something with blood then you can just say so, and not bash
my insides
in. Besides, since when are you into the whole kinky blood-sucking thing?"
Piper paused. Something was very, very off ... her mind was full of sleep and nightmares with trolls and swords
in them ... but then, she knew her name was Piper, and she lived in a nice basement apartment with her son, like
she had done since she gave birth to him.
What did I have to eat last night? She wondered silently, racking her brain for more odd memories. One of them
brought a name to
mind, which she decided to use. It never struck her that Lucius wasn't her biological son, or that she was never
this weird when waking up.
"Lucius, hon?"
"I already said, what do you want... And I'm not the kid."
Not the kid. Alright, if it wasn't Lucius- and she remembered getting cancer. Having her reproductive system
removed... but somehow that seemed to have been only a year ago, and not long before Lucius came along.
Chalking it up to wierd dreams, she rolled over.
"I was going to say, 'go get me a bandage.' But it's not late enough for you to get up, is it?"
"Not late enough for you either," he replied. "I'm not the one with severe sun problems."
She had to purse her lips together to stop from laughing. Had she really thought that this was a dream? Lucius
was her precious little boy, and this was her husband. The things your mind did when you slept! "Yes, well, then
let's try and get some sleep in."
Just then, there was a timid knock at the door. It opened slightly and Lucius' pale face peeked inside. "Mommy?
Dad?"
"We're here, honey."
"I had a nightmare. Can I stay up with you?"
Piper smiled and waved the boy in. "How about you stay with dad while I go make coffee, instead? You need to
get some sleep for school tomorrow. Alright?" she ruffled Lucius' white-blonde hair. So much like his father's.
"Are you going to work tonight?"
"Maybe, Luc. Your father was going to help me write some poems."
"So funny, Pipe."
"I know I am, Will!" and she got up with a flourish, her heavy nightclothes unsticking from her skin and letting the
cool night air pass over her. "See you guys in a few."
Scene change. There is a rather creepy cemetary, which has tombstones covered in mold and overgrown lilac
bushes. In the middle of it all, sitting on the step of an enormous monument, is Piper. She has a man sitting beside her
that looks extraordinarily like Lucius. He is, in fact, Lucius' father.
Piper was writing in a industrial-size notebook and muttering to herself, "Knows... throws... prose... sews... "
"And I thought I was bad. 'My life is a nose, with every lie I tell it grows... ' Really, you should stick to being a
lawyer."
"What's with the bad mood, Will? I'm not even that grouchy when they probe me... stupid exams. Trust me- no
nook or cranny is safe when they notice your stomach contains a lot of blood. Speaking of, when's that last time
you had any?"
"I don't like setting a bad example for Lucius, alright? Get off my bloody case."
She sighed. "Ordinarily I would laugh at that. Look, just because I've got a soul doesn't mean I don't know what
you're going through- "
"But you don't! You haven't been around long enough to know anything except how to be annoying!"
"Stop yelling at me! What is wrong with you!" Piper held her head in her hands. "I need a break. I'll call you later."
"Where are you going?"
It hurt to even think what she was about to say. Usually Will was thoughtful and kind. He could get grouchy around
other vampires, and regular people, but since Piper was neither of those they rarely fought. Especially since they
had gotten married... That had been the oddest experience of her life. Lately, Lucius had been acting scared
and having nightmares, though. Piper's firm had given her a transfer offer to Los Angeles that she hadn't
accepted. "I'm going to L.A. for a week. Lucius is coming with me. I need a break, William, I need a break from
us."
He watched Piper's figure disappear behind a gravestone. What the hell had just happened? Things were
acting very out-of-order lately. If she was going away, he would too. He would go down and see the one person
he didn't want to and talk about the one thign he didn't want to. Fun, fun.
Cut to:
A knock came at the door and Lindsay opened it. She'd stuck with Cordelia's advice and stayed home with
the girl for a day... honestly, she felt very sick.
The sight that awaited her only made her feel sicker. Standing at the door was a familiar vampire- somone
Lindsay had only seen twice and hoped never to see again. "What are you doing here?" she asked loudly,
hoping Cordelia would get the message and back her up, preferably with lots of stakes.
"I'm honestly not sure. Thought maybe I'd speak to your happy young boyfriend. He in?"
"No," Lindsay said harshly. Then, "You did mean Angel, right?"
"No, I meant Father Christmas. Do tell me he hasn't gone to the North Pole already?"
At that moment, Cordelia stepped beside Lindsay, crossbow in hand. "Oh, God. What the hell do you want,
Spike?"
"Come in, Spike, sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?" the vampire asked himself cynically.
A half hour later, Lindsay and Cordelia sat comfortably on the couch, their crossbows pointed directly at Spike.
He was sitting on the floor, looking very displeased.
Angel entered the room with Charles Gunn, an associate and friend, talking about the dracnar demon they just decapitated.
"Oh yeah, man and when he took a swipe at me-i thought that was it! but then you came in with your sword and.." Gunn was saying.
"SPIKE?!" Angel interrupted "What the hell are you doing here?" Anger showed clearly on his face, he still hadn't forgotten the last time William the bloody payed him a vist, or the torture that insued.
Spike sighed. "I'm looking for my girl."
They all looked at him dumbfounded, they had not expected THAT.
TBC...
Will Angel stake spike? Who the hell is Ip?! Will Piper and Lindsay ever get back home? or are they doomed to become mortal enemies?!
Find out next time on...
CITY OF INSANITY
!*review*!