Disclaimer: Angel and his respective adversaries belong to Joss Whedon and Co., and all of 'Charmed' belongs to Constance M. Burge; I'm just using them for the moment
Feedback: I'd like that, believe me
AN: This is set around 'Hell Hath No Fury', but assume that anything you don't see happened pretty much as it did in the show; any major differences will be easy enough to work out. I apologise, but I'm not up to rewriting the entire episode
AN 2: I know I said I'd go on to 'Knight to Remember' in this chapter, but I changed my mind; I felt that I should explore Angel's effect on the series as a whole in more detail. Unless specified otherwise, assume that everything works out the same way in this story as it did in the actual episodes
Sent to the Witch
Staring up at the roof of her flat, Paige smiled to herself as she thought about recent events in her life. True, it would take some time for her to properly get used to the idea of having sisters, but they seemed like pleasant people; just give her a bit of time to get used to the situation, and she was sure the three of them would be great friends…
If only her recent reading material didn't keep on consuming her thoughts.
Staring over at the book by her bed, she sighed, picked it up, and stared sadly at the sentence that had consumed her attention since she'd first read this novel.
Throughout history, witches have been misunderstood, persecuted and destroyed. The public hanging, drowning, and burning of women suspected of witchcraft is a far more recent chapter of our history then most people realise…
She knew that her sisters weren't evil, of course- the only 'evil' thing she'd encountered so far was that… Source that had possessed Shane- but still… knowing the prejudices against witchcraft…
Sighing, she tossed the book away and onto a nearby couch as she stared up at the ceiling. Maybe she should try and prove to herself that the spells were good by casting a few herself; nothing major, just a few little details to deal with a few work-related problems…
There was a knock at the door.
"Who is that?" Paige asked, sitting up on her bed and looking curiously in the direction of the apartment's entrance.
"Angel," a voice replied; Paige instantly recognised it as being the voice of the man who'd given her advice twice already, and possibly prevented her from making a big mistake by talking to Shane after her powers activated.
"Angel?" she said, getting up curiously and walking over to the door of her apartment. Opening it, she found herself staring at the man in question; dressed, like the last two times she'd seen him, in a long black leather coat duster and dark trousers. She was, however, relieved to note that he was now wearing a dark green jumper as opposed to the almost blood-red shirt he'd been wearing the last few times they'd met; at least she knew he varied his wardrobe slightly.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, staring at him in confusion.
"Thought I'd see how you were," he said, shrugging dismissively, as though it was perfectly normal for someone you'd only met twice to pay a visit on you in your apartment at eight in the evening. "Can I come in?"
"Uh… sure," Paige said, stepping aside to allow him access. A part of her was berating herself for letting a man she knew practically nothing about into her apartment, but the rest of her was actually rather relaxed about it.
Besides, if Angel had ever wanted to… try anything, the alley where they'd first met would be a far better location to attack her than in her apartment building; at least in the alley there was less chance of someone finding them.
"Nice place," Angel commented as he stepped inside the apartment.
"Well, I try," Paige said, shrugging dismissively as Angel's eyes fell on the book that she'd tossed aside earlier. Before she could stop him, he'd picked it up, opened it at the page she'd been looking at earlier, and then glanced up at Paige briefly.
"Nervous, huh?" he asked her, as he put the book back down and looked over at Paige. Paige, unsure what to say to that, just shrugged slightly.
"You have every right to be nervous," he said, as he walked over to stand behind the sofa, leaning on it with one hand as he looked at her critically, somehow managing to make himself an imposing presence in the room without actually being intimidating. "You're entering into a world you knew nothing about mere days ago, and your powers are still erratic; you need to focus more on your objective than you do at the moment."
"Focus more?" Paige asked, looking at him in confusion. "Is that all you've got to say to me? Couldn't you be just a bit more helpful?"
Angel shrugged. "Magic isn't really my field; I can't give you anything from experience," he said apologetically. "Just remember; keep your use of it secret from anyone else, and avoid anything for personal gain, and you'll be fine."
"Again with the personal gain?" Paige asked, looking at him curiously. "What's wrong with that?"
"It rebounds," Angel replied simply. "Trust me; it's not worth it. There are always some problems that can't be solved with magic; it doesn't do you any good to start relying on it just because it's easier."
He turned around to leave the apartment, but then glanced back at her briefly. "And on that topic, if you get the chance to look at the Book of Shadows, just leave it where it is; it's not worth the risk to take it outside. Putting aside the protection charms that are on it, too many people would kill to get access to that thing; you'd be leaving yourself wide open to a potential attack."
Paige was about to say something to that, but, before she could, Angel stepped out the door and had already vanished by the time she got to the corridor herself.
Still… as she turned back to her apartment, she couldn't deny that he had a point.
Maybe she should try and find out a bit more about the magic side of things before she made any judgement calls…
A few hours later, Paige was beginning to wish that she'd never bothered to get out of bed this morning.
Why is it, she asked herself, that on the first day I drop in to learn about magic, my sister mutates into a fury, goes off on a rampage, and we don't have any idea how to save her?
Glancing over at Leo, Cole and Phoebe, rapidly pouring over the Book of Shadows in a desperate attempt to find a solution, Paige was already beginning to wonder if this whole 'helping-to-save-the-world' thing was something that it was a good idea for her to do.
After all, what, exactly, had she achieved so far? A bit of extra wallop, true, but it hadn't been enough to stop Piper getting contaminated by the furies, had it?
"Any luck?" she asked, glancing over at Phoebe. "You know, in the sense of… un-demoning Piper when she gets here?"
Phoebe sighed, shook her head, and slammed the Book shut. "Nothing," she said, sighing and slamming her hand against the wall in frustration. "All I've found that even might be helpful is that we have to 'close the portal of unexpressed fury', and how are we meant to do that?"
"Unexpressed?" Leo said, looking over at Phoebe in confusion. "Trust me; Piper's being very… vocal about her annoyance these days."
"Yes, but why is the mystery!" Phoebe said, spinning around to yell at Leo. "How can I get Piper to calm down when I'm not even sure what she's angry about?"
"Well… maybe we should think about stuff that happened recently?" Paige asked, looking at Phoebe inquiringly. "I mean, well, maybe she's mad at… I dunno… herself? For failing to save Prue?"
"No, self-loathing wouldn't work for the furies," Leo put in as he looked over at Paige. "It has to be someone else that she hates, not just herself."
Phoebe looked over at Leo curiously at that, as though a plan was forming in her mind.
"Well… that seems easy enough, doesn't it?" she said, nodding slightly in a thoughtful manner as she looked around at the other three people in the room. "After all, she's already gotten over her anger at Leo for being unable to heal Prue, Cole hasn't done anything to her recently, and she doesn't even know Paige well enough to be angry at her for anything, so it's got to be me she's concealing something about."
Paige frowned at Phoebe inquiringly. She followed her sister's reasoning about why it couldn't be anyone else that Piper was angry at, but why would she be angry at Phoebe?
"The reason she's hacked off at you being…?" she asked, looking at Phoebe inquiringly.
"I wasn't there to help her and Prue vanquish Shax," Phoebe explained, as she turned back to look over the book. "I may have had a reason for not being around- I was trying to negotiate for a means of keeping our secret safe after we accidentally vanquished a demon on live TV- but maybe she feels that I should have been there to help out, and, since I wasn't… well, it led to Prue dying."
"Could work…" Cole said, nodding thoughtfully as he looked at his lover. Paige, however, wasn't convinced. True, Phoebe's reasoning added up, but her time in social work had given her practice with working out how people were feeling, and Piper didn't act around like Phoebe like she was blaming her for something…
Then Cole suddenly yelled in pain and dropped to the ground, clutching his ears as though trying to block out a loud noise. Startled, Paige suddenly found herself standing on the further side of the attic near the door, Phoebe standing beside Cole saying something about someone being close…
And then a fury barged in through the window.
Phoebe didn't even seem to think; she leapt into the air and lashed out with a powerful kick that sent the demonic woman flying, just as two more furies (One of them Piper, Paige noted in horror) appeared beside Cole.
"NO!" Leo yelled, diving forward and tackling Piper to the ground even as she began to raise her hands as though to blow Cole up.
"Phoebe!" Paige called over to her sister. Leaving the current fury, Phoebe, still in the air, turned around to look back at the others before diving forward and tackling Piper's companion to the ground, landing right where the other fury had been. At the same time, Piper threw Leo off to one side and got back onto her feet, locking eyes with her sister.
"Cole is not your problem, Piper," Phoebe said, indicating her still-dazed half-demon boyfriend. "You know it, don't you? You think I abandoned you. You think it's my fault that Prue died. You blame me. You should just admit it!"
Piper didn't even seem to be paying attention; she just tossed Phoebe aside and into the nearby wall with an unpleasant crack! To Paige's relief, it seemed as though Phoebe had only damaged an arm rather than a neck, but that still left her at least partially out of the fight, and Piper didn't seem to be showing any sign of wanting to stop…
And that's when it hit Paige.
There was someone else that Piper could be angry at…
Paige didn't even stop to think; remembering Angel's earlier words, she ran forward, grabbed Piper's arm, focused her mind like a laser beam on her intended objective, and orbed them both…
To a memorial wall in a monastery, right in front of a very particular plaque.
PRUDENCE HALLIWELL
1970-2001
"Forever in our Hearts."
Releasing her grip on her sister, Paige watched as Piper stared at the plaque in front of her, her eyes wide in shock. The older witch nearly began to turn for the door and run away, but stopped when she saw that the doors were locked.
"It's not Phoebe who abandoned you, is it, Piper?" Paige said, as her demonised sister turned to stare at Paige, still standing beside the plaque on the wall with Prue's name on it. "It was Prue."
Pier seemed almost ready to try some other means of escape, but Paige walked over, took her arm, and led her back to the plaque like a child wanting to show something to an uncertain adult.
Stopping in front of the plaque, Paige turned to look at Piper.
"Tell her, Piper," she said to the witch. "It's alright to hate her. You should hate her. When my parents died, I hated them for it. I was alone, and I hated them. It's OK to hate Prue."
Piper looked at Paige for a moment, and, inwardly, Paige was already trying to figure out a way to defend herself if Piper attacked…
Then, to her relief, Piper turned to the plaque and rammed her hand against the wall.
"How dare you!" she yelled at the plaque, rage and anger evident in her voice. "How dare you leave me! How could you go and die and leave me here all alone! Please… come back! I need you!"
As Paige watched her, Piper slumped to the ground, her hand still on the plaque, and she started to cry. "Please come back…. Please…"
And, as Piper turned back to normal, collapsed on the ground, sobbing like a drain, Paige did the only thing she could; she knelt down beside her newfound sister, took her in her arms, and hugged her as she cried for the elder sister that Paige had never known.
The next afternoon, shortly after Paige had returned to her apartment after another long day at work, she was roused from her lethargic state by a loud knock on the door.
"What the…" she said, getting up and walking over to the door…
Only to break into a smile when saw who was standing on the other side.
"Angel!" she said, grinning at her strange new… friend, for lack of a more apt term; he was certainly more than an acquaintance… as he stood outside her door. "What are you doing here?"
"I heard about the Fury thing," Angel explained as he entered the apartment and turned to look at Paige. "I just wanted to see how you were."
Paige shrugged dismissively. "Oh, y'know, I'm good," she said, in an off-hand manner. "Piper's recovering nicely from the whole experience, everyone's forgiven her for the whole 'trying-to-kill-us' thing, and she even brought me some muffins."
She sighed as she leaned back against the wall. "Overall? Profitable time all round."
She looked over at Angel sharply, as a thought suddenly occurred to her. "By the way, thanks for the tip about focus last time; it really paid off when things looked like getting ugly back there."
"Thanks," Angel said dismissively. "I'm glad it paid off; as I said, magic isn't my field of expertise."
"Yeah, y'know, I meant to ask you about that; how do you know so much about this stuff?" Paige asked, staring at Angel inquiringly.
Angel shrugged. "I know a lot about the supernatural side of the world," he said, by way of explanation. "My parents were killed by… well, demons- I generally didn't bother too much about the specifics of what they were at the time- when I was younger, and I've been learning about them and their kind ever since. I can't do spells to save my life, but I'm pretty good at defending myself in a fight, so, given their general disdain for hand-to-hand combat and their commonly human-level strength, it pretty much balances out."
Paige looked at him curiously.
"You learned how to fight?" she asked him, a curious expression on her face. "Uh… any chance you could give me a few lessons?"
Angel looked at Paige in surprise, and she chuckled slightly. "Yeah, I know my powers can be pretty useful in a combat situation, but I'd still prefer to have something else to use other than orbing the guy's weapons out of his hands and into mine. I would have asked Phoebe, but I'd like to have something to surprise them with…"
She looked Angel in the eyes again, and raised an eyebrow slightly. "So, care to give me a few pointers?"
Angel looked back at her for a few moments, and then nodded.
"All right," he said, as he studied the floor space of the apartment before looking back at Paige. "We've got the space to have a fairly decent lesson here; I'm ready to begin when you are."
Paige smiled at him. Somehow, even though she still didn't know much about this man, she was already beginning to feel comfortable around him, and the prospect of having to be close to him seemed somehow…
Pleasant, she guessed was the best term.
Then, as Angel took up a combat stance and told Paige to copy him, she shook her head slightly and got back to the matter at hand.
The first lesson was about to begin.