Chapter Three


Buffy woke in Angel's arms the next morning, "Oh, God," she moaned out loud afraid of what she might have done. "Oh, God," she moaned again, this time in pain.

"Don't worry, nothing happened," Angel whispered.

"My head, did you happen to get the number of that truck?"

Angel chuckled, "Carl spiked your drink and as soon as we find out what he used, he will answer for it. I promise."

Buffy nodded her head and then tried to think back. She was startled when nothing came back to her. "Angel, what happened last night? We were talking and then... I can't remember anything."

"We just talked. That's all," Angel thought he saw doubt in her eyes so he elaborated, "I noticed your Purity ring. I wouldn't take advantage of anyone like that." He didn't want to embarrass her and it wasn't a total lie. They had talked about where and how she got her Purity ring as well as some other stuff that he was sure that if she had been drunk, she would have never had told him.

Buffy saw the truth to what he was saying in his eyes and nodded, feeling only a little relieved. "Why can't I remember anything?"

Angel shrugged his shoulders. "I'm having Carl's flask analyzed to see what was in it."

Before Buffy could say anything else, there was a knock on the door and then they heard a female voice, "30, 29, 28…"

"Come in!" Angel shouted. He got out of bed to reveal that he had a pair of gym shorts on and opened the door.

He was promptly grabbed into a bear hug by a young teenage girl. "Hey! That's the fastest you've ever gotten dressed," the girl laughed.

"We were up already," Angel said as he smiled. "Buffy, this is Kathy, my sister. Kathy, Buffy Summers."

"Hi." Buffy waved shyly.

"Hi!" Kathy said energetically, obviously not surprised at finding a perfect stranger in Angel's bed.

Angel turned to his sister and asked, "What are you doing here?"

Kathy looked at her brother, "Mr. Photographic Memory asking *me* what I'm doing here?" She gave a dramatic sigh, "Mama and Daddy's anniversary cruise. Ring a bell, Mr. Hormones?"

"Oh, man! I completely forgot!"

"Angel, forget? Quick! Call the Guinness Book of World Records!" Kathy laughed as she teased her older brother, "I know I'm writing this down!" She looked at her brother and said, "What's with you? You never forget anything."

Angel ignored her question and asked one of his own, "Is Mom and Dad still here?"

"Yeah. They're downstairs. Why?"

Angel turned to Buffy and said, "Um…I've got to go talk to my parents for a minute…or an hour or two. Umm…If you want, I'm sure that Darla has some clothes you can change into. And the shower is over there." He pointed to a door to his right. "When I finish talking to my parents, then we can go to L.A. to visit La Niña." He looked at his sister who looked confused and said, "That is if you don't mind my sister tagging along."

Buffy looked at the girl who reminded her of Dawn and smiled, "Of course not."

"Great!" Angel said as he put some jeans and a T-shirt on and ran off to find Darla first, then his parents. He found Darla in Lindsey's room, "Hey, Darla, Mom and Dad are here."

Darla looked at Angel and nodded her head. She knew that he wanted to tell his parents that he was going to be a father. She had convinced him to wait until they dropped Kathy off for their anniversary cruise. She grabbed the dress that she wore the night before and put it on. "Oh, do you have some clothes that Buffy can borrow? We're going to L.A."

Darla looked at Angel and smiled. As they passed Angel's room, she stuck her head in the room, "Kathy, take Buffy to my room. Buffy, choose what you want to wear and pack some clothes for a couple of days. Lord knows I don't wear my clothes more than once, someone should get some use out of them." She walked on with Angel to greet his parents.

"Mom, Dad," Angel said as he saw them in the breakfast room sitting at a table.

"Angel," his mother greeted him with a hug and a grin. "Darla, it's always nice to see you, Sweetie."

"Hi, Mrs. Patty, Mr. Sean," Darla said as she received a hug from both Patty and Sean MacKenzie.

Patty launched right into what she wanted Angel to do with Kathy while they were gone, "She needs to do Chapter eleven of History, Chapter nine of Science, chapter fifteen of Math, I want her to diagram five sentences a day for Grammar, Chapter eight of her French Book. I would really appreciate it if you could get her to read a whole novel while we're gone. Oh and she needs to write in her journal everyday."

"Got it."

"Well, I've written it all down for you. She can check it off as she completes it."

"Mom." Angel smiled indulgently. "She's thirteen not three,"

"I know. It's just…"

"I know. It's been a while since you left her for this long."

"Yeah. Not since she was kidnapped."

"But she has spent the night with me since then. She will be fine. I promise," Angel reassured his parents. He then looked at Darla.

Before he could say anything else, Darla spoke up and said, "Besides, you know, it will give him a good idea of what he has to look forward to. You…you know, having a teenager in thirteen years."

"Darla, what are you talking about?" Sean asked confused.

Angel gave Darla a look. He'd meant to ease his parents into the idea. But, well, the cat was out of the bag. He reached out and put his right arm around Darla's shoulder. "Mom, Dad, Darla's pregnant and I'm the father."

Patty got up and hugged her son again, "So when's the wedding?"

"There isn't going to be one," Darla answered for the two of them. "Angel asked, but I turned him down. I don't want to get married. But, Angel will be very much apart of this baby's life and I hope that you will too."

"Of course!" The MacKenzie couple said in unison, not completely surprised at this outcome. They'd known Darla since she was a little girl, ever since her parents' divorce she'd maintained that marriage wasn't for her. "I think Kathy will be thrilled to be an aunt," Patty added.

"I think so, too, Mom," Angel smiled. He had expected a lecture from them both, first on getting Darla pregnant before they were married and then on not getting married since she was already pregnant with his child. But the admonishment never came.

"Is it true? Is it true?" Kathy asked enthusiastically as she came into the room.

"Is what true?" Angel inquired.

"Dru said that you and Darla are having a baby and Buffy is your soul-mate! Is it true? Is it true?" Kathy bounced up and down as she demanded an answer from her older brother.

"Well, the baby part is. The soul mate part – we're not sure yet. We just met a few days ago."

"Well, if Dru said it…" Patty joked with a sparkle in her eye. Patty knew that Dru had never been wrong before, but there was always a first time and she wasn't going to count on Dru being right on something this important. If a baby wouldn't cause her son to marry, then nothing would. That saddened her; she wanted him to find the love that she and her husband shared.

"I'm sorry, Angel." Everybody looked up as Buffy came downstairs. "Dru came in and told Kathy some stuff and she just took off. I couldn't catch her," Buffy sounded as if she had been running after Kathy.

"It's alright, Buffy. Oh, uh…, this is my mom and dad, Patty and Sean MacKenzie. Mom, Dad, this is Buffy Summers."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie," Buffy said politely as she shook their hands.

Patty noticed the way that her son was looking at this young woman. *Maybe Dru is right after all. We'll just have to wait and see,* she thought to herself.

"It's nice meeting you, Miss Summers. I hope we will see you again. Kathy, you be good for your brother, now. Don't tease him too much." Sean didn't buy for one second the angelic look his youngest directed at him. "Angel, make sure she does her school work. Don't let her try and talk you out of it." Buffy noticed a thick Irish accent.

Kathy groaned.

"I won't, Dad." With those three words, Angel reassured his father that he would make sure that Kathy did all of her school work.

Kathy gave her parents a hug goodbye and whispered something in her father's ear that made him smile. "See you in a week," she called out as she ran out of the room.

"Kathy, take your knapsack to your room!" Patty yelled after her daughter. Again, Buffy noticed a thick Irish accent, but Mrs. MacKenzie's voice was soft and gentle where as, Sean's voice was deep and stern.


Kathy was listening to her iPod as Angel was showing Buffy to her room in the Penthouse in L.A. They had just gotten back from touring La Niña. It was a lot smaller than either Buffy or Kathy had imagined it would be. Neither of the girls could understand how a crew of men could sleep on a tiny ship with chickens, sheep, and other cargo. They thought it would be too crowded and entirely too uncomfortable considering that sailors were gone months at a time. The girls couldn't conceive willingly sailing on a crowded ship for that long. "Maybe that's why there were very few female sailors," Kathy pointed out reasonably.

Due to Kathy's iPod, she missed out on the conversation that Angel and Buffy had in the front seat of the car. Angel and Buffy both admitted to having feelings for each other. Angel also admitted that it was against the rules for him to date one of his students. Buffy said that she would just go to Dr. Spangler on Monday and tell her that her new boyfriend would be doing the tutoring.

Angel had smiled when she said that and he promised her that he would be faithful to her. Buffy hadn't expected that. Between Willow's words last night and her own observations, she'd thought he was going to tell her the exact opposite.

Kathy was lying on the sofa with the headphones on when she yelled, "I'm going to order a pizza!"

Angel pulled an ear bud out of her left ear and yelled back, "We're right here!"

Buffy laughed. Seeing the two of them almost made her miss her own little sister. "I'll make the call while you two scream each other to deafness. What do you want on your pizza, Kathy?"

"Pepperoni."

"Extra Cheese," Angel said.

Buffy went to make the call.

Scene Divider

As they were eating the pizza, Kathy noticed Buffy's ring. "Hey, Angel gave me a purity ring exactly like that one for my birthday last year! See?!" Kathy enthusiastically showed Buffy her ring.

Buffy looked at Angel, surprised, and smiled, "I got this one when I went with a friend in jr. high on a church trip. She thought it was corny, but I didn't. It made sense to me, so I took the vow and they gave me this ring as a reminder of the vow."


Angel was in Buffy's room and they were sitting on her bed talking when Kathy yelled out, "Angel! Help! My Angel!" Angel and Buffy ran to Kathy's room.

Angel grabbed his sister into a hug. "It's alright. I'm here. I'm here. It's alright, Munchkin. I'm right here."

Kathy opened her eyes as she heard her brother's whispers. "My Angel?"

Angel smiled and pushed her hair out her face, "Yeah, I'm here."

"He was here, Angel."

"It was just a bad dream, Little Bit," Angel tried to reassure his sister.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Seeing that the girl was calmer, Buffy approached them and asked, "Have you ever played a game called 'Anywhere But Here?'" Kathy shook her head no while still clinging to her Angel. "Okay, I want you to tell about a place where want to be and who want to be with. No boyfriends allowed. It can be anyone. Usually it's a star." Buffy smiled when Kathy's eyes rounded at the idea. "And it can be anywhere in the world but here. Describe the place in detail. What's the weather like? Any other people around? Any furniture? Any other rooms? Are you inside or outside? What are you doing?"

Kathy thought about it, "I'd like to be in a log cabin in the mountains. It's got a fireplace, a sofa and two chairs. In the kitchen there is a table with four chairs. There is one bedroom with a king sized bed. It's snowing outside so there is a fire in the fireplace."

"Are there any smells?" Buffy asked as she rubbed her hand in circles lightly on Kathy's back.

"Oh, I can smell homemade cornbread, vegetable soup."

"Who's cooking?"

"Brad Pitt," Kathy said as she drifted off.

When Angel looked down and saw that his sister was back to sleep, he looked at his brand new girlfriend and asked, "How did you do that?"

Buffy shrugged, "I don't know. It's just something that me and my little sister do when we have nightmares. We play 'Anywhere But here' and then fall back to sleep with happy dreams."

"You're amazing, you know that?"

"What?"

"Kathy never goes back to sleep after one of her nightmares -- not until dawn or after, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"When she was ten, we were in Ireland visiting our grandparents for a family reunion. Kathy and a couple of our cousins her age, were walking to a store for some candy. There was a drive by shooting. Our two cousins were shot -- both lived. A stranger came by and offered to take Kathy to the hospital since they wouldn't let her ride in the ambulance with our cousins. There just wasn't room. Kathy went with the man but he didn't follow the ambulance." He'd been pulling the covers closer around his sister's body, and his hands clenched at the memory. "He took her to an abandoned building and held her there for four days before he called for a ransom demand. We think that she was singled out. That the shooting was planned so that her kidnapper could attack in the confusion. He was just trying to get money from our parents, which he got. They never caught the man or the drive-by shooters. The Irish Police still don't think that the shooting and the kidnapping were connected, but we do."

Buffy was at a loss of words. That the enthusiastic girl she'd met that morning could have gone through such a traumatic experience.... It sounded impossible, and yet the anger in Angel's eyes was unequivocally real.

Angel seemed to notice and softened his expression. "Anyway, Kathy has been home schooled ever since and we try to shield her from the press as much as possible. She now has a phobia of going anywhere without me or our parents." He noticed the iPod earphones tangled with Kathy's long hair and set to free them as carefully as possible. "She can stay alone in a familiar place, like one of our homes, for a few hours and be okay, but not for an extended period of time. She doesn't like going out in public and it frustrates her, because she used to love to go out. Now it frightens her. She's afraid that she will be taken again." Task finished, he placed the earphones beside her bedside lamp. "And ever since the kidnapping, when she has a nightmare, especially if he is in the nightmare, she's too afraid to go back to sleep. Brad Pitt seemed to do the trick," he tried to lighten things up.

Buffy smiled wanly in response, still too shocked by the news. "Was she able to describe the man who kidnapped her to the police?"

Angel nodded. "Even better. Kathy is a very talented artist - we get our talent from our mom – so she painted a perfect picture. They put it out there for everyone to see, but so far no leads. In the meantime, Kathy is too scared to go back to Ireland – even to visit family. I volunteer to let her stay with me when Mom and Dad need to go check on the businesses over there. So that bastard's not only messed up my sister's life. I love Ireland, I really do, I'd like to go back, but I haven't been back since it happened."

"Angel, you're twenty-five. You can go with out your parents."

"I know, but when I have the time -- during the holidays -- to go, my grandparents come here to see me and Kathy both. So…."

"Yeah, I can guess. I've been to England a few times. My step-dad wanted us to meet his family there. But they come here, too. So I know how it is."

"Besides, pretty soon, Mom's going to be staying with Kathy so Dad can teach me how to run MacKenzie Enterprises."

"You expecting that anytime soon?"

"No, not really. Dad says he'll teach me when I get married, when I ask, or when I finish school."

"You're not interested?"

"Well, I know most of it just by watching him and the Business Administration courses I've taken, but I'm placing my education above that right now," Angel explained.


Ok, I have to go do some work now. I've been here for little over and hour and now I have to get on my volunteer work and make some phone calls to update a list for the place where I volunteer at. Hopefully I can upload some more tomorrow. Click the review button and let me know what you think. :-)