Gunn

It was best described as thinking through wax.

After what was supposed to be the final battle, Charles Gunn felt as if he's fallen asleep. Every now and then, some interesting noise made its way through. But the only thing that remotely registers to Gunn as anything but background noise is two voices.

"…wrong, somehow. I could fix this entire ward, but…"

Gunn vaguely recognized the voice. He's heard it before, sweet, honey like but with a strength that ran underneath.

"Then do it afterwards. But fix him first. He needs it, I need him and Jenny may need him most of all."

As long as he lived, Gunn didn't think he'd ever forget Angel's voice.

Shortly afterwards, he felt a warm glow, and fell into a warm blanket of darkness.

When Charles Gunn awoke, he felt a familiar presence that could only be his old boss. Angel had a way of being stealthy and obvious all at once.

"Gunn," Angel said, "how do you feel?"

"Like a million bucks," Gunn croaked. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too parched.

"Here," Angel filled a cup, and held it to his friend's lips. Gunn drank it like a man dying of thirst, "take your time, Gunn. We have some things we have to discuss."

"Yeah, yeah we do," Gunn nodded.

"Hold on," Angel reached into his coat, and flipped his cell-phone open, "Spike, this is Angel. No, no, I'm not using that stupid codename. Because it's stupid! Look, just keep Illyria busy, okay?"

"Illyria's here?" Gunn asked, baffled. When they'd last met in hell, well, it wasn't pleasant.

"She's been your bodyguard," Angel explained as he closed the phone, "more than a few demon lords were angry at me for returning LA to earth. You were seen as a soft target, so Illyria decided to discourage retaliation."

"Really?"

Angel shrugged, "I think she was just looking for a decent fight before deciding whether or not to kill you."

"Yeah, that sounds like our girl," Gun sighed, "So I guess you decided to beat her to the punch?"

"Yeah, wait…what?"

Gunn shook his head, "I remember what happened with Wes now, and he only took your boy. Me, I did a lot worse, even if he's alright now. Is he alright?

"He is, but Gunn, hold on…"

"I don't blame you, Angel."

"Wait, stop, back up. Gunn, you've got the wrong idea!"

"Really? Spike calling off my bodyguard, you, here alone? The math isn't complex."

"Gunn, what happened when we were in hell, that wasn't you," Angel said coolly, "believe me, I should know. I don't add 'with a soul' to 'vampire' just to sound cool."

"It may not have been my foot on the gas, but I was driving that car," Gunn replied, "I think I understand your guilt trip better than anyone else by now. First Fred, now this…I'm ready, Angel."

"Even if you were responsible, and you weren't, you should know it's not that easy," Angel said, "it's not about the mistakes you make in life, it's how you use them to better yourself and the world around you, Gunn. And it's a journey that never ends."

"If you're not here to kill me," Gunn squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't much relieved, not with the weight of the guilt that hung over him now, "then why are you here? Why's Spike distracting Illyria?"

"Your wounds were pretty bad," Angel explained, "I called in a favor to have you healed. I need you, Gunn. You see, when the Senior Partners pulled LA into hell, I guess they were kinda rough on the laws of physics. Broke a few other dimensions when doing it, I guess. And see, Lorne, well, you might have heard…"

"You're dissembling," Gunn interrupted, "and you know, that's like the first word Wolfram & Hart uploaded into my head. Neat word, dissembling. To conceal or disguise. If you're not here to kill me or ask for an apology for killing your boy, why are you here, man?"

Angel steadied himself.

"Fred had a daughter, in Pylea. We found her."

Angel studied Gunn carefully.

"Jenny."

But it was Angel whose face was overcome with shock.

"…how did you know her name?"

Gunn closed his eyes, "Fred never wanted you guys to know, to worry it, but she had bad days. Once I woke up once and she was huddled in the corner, just shaking and her eyes were all bloodshot. Another night, she woke up crying, asking me where some people were. Jenny's name came up, maybe twice, but honestly I didn't think anything 'bout it. I only remembered it because it sounded normal, ya know? Not like out of Lord of the Rings, or somethin'."

Angel nodded.

"I actually managed to convince her to see a counselor. Fred said she didn't last ten minutes before the guy gave her the hairy eyeball," Gunn explained.

He thought it best to spare Angel the exact details, how Fred alternated between wracking sobs, because of how the man just casually dismissed five years of suffering with a roll of his eyes, like the pain, the beatings, the fear, like she just did not matter. And when that hurt, that pain faded, it switched to a furious rage at the man for calling it all lies.

"What's she like?"

Angel sighed, and sat down, "Brilliant, clever, got an appetite like her mother, loves to tinker but…"

Angel rubbed his hands together.

"She's maybe seven years old but she's not a kid, not really. She keeps inserting herself in our work, she does everything she can to be useful, and she is, but…" Angel shook his head, "I don't think she sees any real difference between us and her old masters. She feels she has to be useful, and every time I try to get through to her otherwise, it feels like I'm either speaking in Spanish or she thinks I'm testing her."

"I'm sure you'll do better with her than we did with Connor," said Gunn.

"Honestly? I might prefer it if she were like him, even just a little."

"What, we got our memories back and you didn't, boss man?" Gunn asked, "hey, the kid may be alright now, but you do remember him sinking you in the ocean, right?"

"Hard to forget," Angel muttered, "but he was angry, spiteful. That's something. Jenny's the complete opposite. She goes out of her way to be useful, like redesigning a crossbow with retractable blades…"

"That ain't so bad."

"Gunn…"

"What? I spent my tenth birthday fashioning hiding places for stakes."

"Well, if it was just that, it might not be that bad. But when she isn't inserting herself into cases, she's going out of her way to be out of the way."

"What do you mean?"

Angel fell into the visitor's chair and rubbed his chin, "Know how I said she had her Fred's appetite? We…ah, didn't know that at first. Not until she threw up Spike's cigarette's butts."

"What?"

Angel shook his head, "She'd been eating out of the trash behind our back. When I asked her why she didn't just ask for some more to eat, she said she didn't think she had the right to."

"That's…," Gunn breathed out, "you think I can get through to her, maybe?"

"That's what I'm hoping," Angel said, "you were the closest to Fred. And I know it hurts to think about, but if anyone knows what might be going on in her head…"

"So the guy who made her an orphan is who you hope can get through to this little girl."

"That's a little crueler than I would have put it, but yeah yea that's the gist."

Gunn rubbed his forehead, "Angel, you gotta understand, Fred did not like talking about what happened. It was like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear!"

"Then if you fail, then you're just another person in this little girl's life who cares about her," Angel said, "and believe me, she doesn't have enough of that. You'll be released in a few days. Give me a call, and we'll go from there, okay?"

"Yeah," Gunn said, silently hoping that Illyria would kill him before he was released.

oooOOooo

Later

Gunn opened the door to his apartment, half expecting it to be covered in dust and cobwebs. Relatively speaking, it had been months since he'd been back, but in reality it had been only a few weeks. Hell, he'd already paid his rent through the next eighteen months (thanks to Wolfram and Hart).

He moved through the apartment, feeling more like a home invader than a renter. His memories as a vampire, fighting for his friends, striking down innocent people, plotting to somehow make it all right again, be the hero that he desperately thought himself to be clawed at him.

He barely felt comfortable in his own skin, let alone his own apartment. Everything felt as if they belonged to another life.

Gunn felt that especially when his eyes fell upon an old picture of him and Fred together, smiling.

Unbidden, Gunn's thoughts went back to the first time he'd heard Jenny's name.

Gunn flipped through the old Times magazine, more to pass the time than anything else. He didn't know how long Fred would be, but in every TV show he'd watched these things lasted an hour, and it had barely been ten minutes.

Gunn had just picked up a second, ancient magazine when he heard the door slam.

"Charles! Charles, you take me home, now!" Fred growled.

The look of pain, her face flush with anger made Fred almost unrecognizable, and she stormed past him without slowing down.

"Baby, wait!" Gunn was on his feet in seconds, but by the time he'd caught up with Fred she was already outside, "hey, what happened?"

"What do you think happened, Charles?" Fred all but screamed in his face, indifferent to the people who were watching them, "I told him I fell into a portal to another world and he thought I was joking! That I was a stupid liar who just needed some fantasy to get laid!"

"He said that?"

"Yes! Five years! Five! Years! Five years of suffering, of starving, of not knowing if I was even sane, he just shrugged off like it was a stupid joke!" Fred put her hands on her head, as if it were about to burst, "like B'orne didn't…, like H'yrne hadn't… like Jenny wasn't… like like I wasn't treated as some subhuman thing! Leashed like a dog!"

"Baby, take a breath, and calm down," Gunn crooked his head towards the eyes that had fallen on them. Fred looked around, and began to feel very self conscious.

"Come on, lets talk this out," Gunn led Fred to a nearby bench, and the two sat down.

"…I'm sorry," Fred wiped the tears from her face, "can we just go back to the hotel and pretend this day never, ever happened ever?"

"We gotta talk about this first," Gunn said, "look, it was stupid, going in cold. We can ask around, maybe talk to someone who knows about vampires and all that, okay?"

"Where are we going to find someone like that, Charles?"

Gunn hesitated, "…no idea, baby. But we can't just give up!"

"I can't go back," Fred said softly.

"Baby…"

"No," Fred growled, "you don't understand, I can't go back. I can't stand the idea that someone is going to look at me, hearing what I've been through, and think that I'm just crazy! Because I want to believe them!"

"Honey, what are you talking about?"

Fred blinked back the tears, "I'm sorry, it's just that…sometimes I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. And a part of me just wants to fall backwards, to pretend it all never happened, to just…disconnect, just like before. And it scares me."

"Do you wanna live like that all your life?" Gunn asked.

"No, but I'm not always standing there," Fred said, "every day, I feel more and more like I'm moving forward. You, Angel, Wesley, Cordelia, well, okay sometimes not Cordelia, you guys never make me feel like that. Maybe I didn't grow up fighting vampires or some watching school, but I can handle it. I'm not alone, you know."

"Fred, come on…"

"And I am getting better. I use actual paper for my equations now, not my wall."

"I know that, but you can't move forward without looking back."

"Charles, I remember the fortune cookie you took that from," Fred smiled.

"Surprised you didn't eat the paper," Gunn chuckled.

"Well, it was a little too stringy," Fred said, "look, lets revisit this later, okay? I wanna make someone regret an all you can eat buffet, and have crazy monkey sex with my boyfriend, okay?"

Gunn put the picture back. He wondered if he pushed just a little harder, if Fred might have been able to confront her past, maybe find Jenny before Fred…before he…

Gunn's thought went to a dark, familiar place, about what could have been, what should have been and what actually was.

Gunn didn't hear the first knock, or the second, and so on.

"'ey, Cueball! Open the bloody door!"

Gunn's head snapped to the side, and he rolled his eyes.

"Spike," Gunn sighed, and rolled his eyes. He opened the door for the British vampire.

"You know the rules 'ere, mate," Spike said.

"You didn't lose that soul of yours, did you?"

"Do I look like some tit who misplaces something that important?" Spike asked, "and besides, unless you got yourself a kitten for me not to eat?"

"What? No!"

"Then you have to trust me. Now let me in, Charlie boy!"

"Fine, fine," Gunn sighed, "get your white vampire ass in here."

"Thanks."

Spike sucker-punched Gunn in the gut, and stepped inside.

"Spike…the hell?"

"Sorry, didn't enjoy that," Spike said, "well, much."

"I think I know what this is about," Gunn stood up, "but if you think I'm gonna let that sucker punch go, you got another thing coming, blondie."

Gunn came at Spike with all the experience of a lifetime of fighting vampires gave him.

And Spike just yawned, blocked each punch and grabbed Gunn by the collar and tossed him on his couch.

"Lucky I'm still healing, you bleach blond asshole."

Spike fell onto the couch next to Gunn, "Keep telling yourself that, Charlie boy. I killed two slayers. You're good, but not good enough."

Gunn rubbed his sore stomach, "I'm guessing this is about why haven't I seen the kid, right?"

"Something like that," Spike said.

"Ya know, I did just get my ass out of the hospital," Gunn observed.

"An' that's any excuse?" Spike said, "I've been waiting for your cue ball since you got back. Had to come inside so I didn't go up like a roman candle."

Gunn glanced outside, and was surprised to see the new sun.

"Well, shit."

"So way I see, you can either stay here with a very annoyed vampire who intends to catch up on his stories, or head over to Angel's roach motel and meet the newest addition to our odd little family."

"I wasn't avoiding it!"

"Really?"

Gunn rubbed his eyes, "What, am I supposed to the great black hope?"

Spike shrugged, "Sure, why not?"

Gunn leaned forward and sighed, "What am I supposed to do? Have you guys thought of that?"

"We have, actually," Spike said, "bloody hell, we expect it. So no pressure. Literally."

"Thank you Spike, if you ever get tired of poetry, you should try greeting cards."

"Thanks. Now move your arse," Spike flicked Gunn upside the head. Gunn tried to ignore it, like he was back in school, but Spike just did not quit. And his vampire strength made it hard to ignore.

"Stop it."

Spike didn't.

"Stop it!"

Spike ignored him.

"Jesus Spike!" Gunn leapt up off the couch, "what the hell do you want from me? How do you expect me to help this girl when I'm the one who made her a god damn orphan?"

"Well, she's technically not an orphan," Spike said, "though, she will be if we ever find her real dad."

"You know what I mean," Gunn said.

"It was Knox who put her in that bloody room and both you and I know that, mate. Not saying you acted the most honorably afterwards, but…"

"Accessory after the fact," Gunn tapped his skull, "still got the legal mumbo jumbo up here, man. Ain't no excuse for what I did."

"Very well then," Spike sighed, "I, Judge William the Bloody, hereby sentence you to a lifetime of community service. There's a sweet little girl at this dusty hotel, start there, eh?"

"…what if I can't help?" Gunn said.

"Then at least you tried, same as the rest of us," Spike said, "you what you're problem is? You're not asking the right question here, mate."

"What question is that?"

"You're asking yourself if you can help. The real question you should be asking yourself…"

"You undead bastard, don't you dare…!"

"What would Fred do?"

oooOOooo

When Gunn walked through the doors of the Hyperion, it felt strange.

He set down the buckets he'd been carrying, and looked around. The old place, didn't look so old. But it didn't feel like walking into the past, or a stranger in a strange land like he did at his apartment.

"Hey, Gunn, right?"

Gunn saw Faith strolling down the hall, axe slung over one shoulder, a gym bag of weapons in the other and an easy smile on her face.

"That's right. Faith, right? The boss man, where he at?"

"He's in the ballroom with the sprout and Kate," Faith said. She set down her weapons, looked at the buckets in his hands, the boxes that rested on top and gave Gunn an odd look.

"What's the story there?"

"Testing a theory, and hopefully having some fun. So, you hanging around for a while?"

Faith threw her head back and sighed dramatically, "Why does everyone keep asking me that? A roof and getting paid to beat up things, who'd turn that down?"

"No offense meant, girl, but after Hell A, well, I just wanna know where we're all going from here, is all."

"Well, I'm in for the long haul," Faith said, "guess you wanna see Jenny, right?"

"Right," Gunn said.

"Coo'. We could always use more help," Faith picked up the weapons, "but Gunn, just a heads up…?"

"Lemmie guess, if I hurt the girl, bad things?" said Gunn, "Faith, I loved Fred, and I'm not about to tear into her daughter 'cause of her daddy."

"Good to know," Faith said, "I'm sorry about your friend, I am dude, but I didn't know her. All I really remember about Fred was that she tried to brain bang Willow, and that was awesomely awkward afterwards. But I know Jenny.

She's a sweet kid. Deserves better than she's gotten. So if you hurt her intentionally, I really dunno what I'll do. I just know it will be bloody, long and freakin' epic. Feel me?"

Gunn nodded, "I feel ya. No worries."

"Good. Now go see her," Faith said, "I got me something undead to kill. Maybe."

Gunn made a pit stop by the old, defunct laundry room, and then went to the ballroom.

The room looked more like it belonged on the set of Law & Order than any detective series. There were five corkboards, one with a map of LA with a half dozen colored pins, another had pictures of vampires in various states of transformation, the third had what seemed like random newspaper clippings, the fourth was another map of LA, but this time it was covered in stickys that had business names written on them, and the last one had a confusing series of math equations on it.

Gunn saw Angel and Kate Lockley studying the board, with a little girl standing between them.

"Gunn!" Angel's relief was almost palpable, "glad you could make it!"

"Couldn't keep me away, boss man," Gunn said. He crooked his head to look at Jenny, "who's the little lady?"

"Jenny, this is my friend Gunn," Angel put a hand on Jenny's back and gently nudged her forward.

"Hello," Jenny gave Gunn a quick smile before casting her eyes down. She had a death grip on a juice box, and shy didn't begin to describe the girl.

"Great to meet you, kiddo," Gunn said. He didn't have to look hard to see that Jenny was indeed Fred's daughter. If her appearance wasn't enough, that brief, flashing smile was probably a Burkle trademark. Fred smiled, but you had to know the girl to know what they meant. This quick, hesitant smile meant that she was still evaluating you, studying the situation and hoping that you were nice.

"So what you all got going on here?"

"Oh!" Jenny's head snapped up, and went to the first corkboard, "I've been documenting vampire attacks. I have a theory that neophyte vampires refuse to travel beyond a certain distance from their lair. And I've found that when you take into account low income housing and empty lots, you could find a nest of vampires with fifty percent less effort."

"Sounds cool," said Gunn.

"Oh, oh!" Jenny went to another section of the map, and pointed to where there were no pins, "see that? There are no known vampire attacks there. Why is that? Because nothing can be something! That an industrial shipping area. I think that's how foreign vampires are smuggled in. Faith is going to check it out for me."

"She's like a calculator for supernatural crime," Kate said, "the FBI needs whole teams to read through hundreds of case files to do what she's done in the last week."

"I'm just helping," Jenny said meekly.

"Sometimes I think it's just us helping you," Angel smiled at Jenny, "we struggle to keep up, to be honest."

"I can see. Got all this done in a week, huh? You a real slav…"

Gunn stopped himself, and saw the looks Angel and Kate were giving him.

"…cker hater, slacker hater, huh?"

Jenny gave Gunn a curious look.

Smooth, Gunn thought to himself. "Say, how about we do something else for a bit? What do you say?"

Jenny looked at Gunn with uncertainty, then to Angel.

"I… really shouldn't. Angel, he needs this cow to…"

"Jenny," Angel interrupted. His voice was soft but firm, "we don't use that word here. And it's fine if we do something else for a while."

Gunn smirked. Angel had the perfect 'Dad' voice.

"Good, we need us ref."

oooOOooo

"So this is why you smell like a bar even though you haven't had a drop to drink."

Angel looked at the two buckets filled with beer bottles, two more empty buckets at the far end of the room, and then to Gunn. Gunn gave Angel his patented 'trust me' look, so Angel just shrugged. Hopefully, whatever he had in mind would be successful in getting Jenny to open up, even if Angel had no real idea what Gunn was thinking.

They were in one of the hotel's old laundry rooms that had been in the middle of being remodeled when the place was shut down. There were no washing machines or dryers', though the pipes were there. Mostly, it was just a dull, grey room with white floors and a drain. The only reason Angel never turned it into a storage space because it was too far out of the way and frankly, a little depressing.

Jenny looked at the buckets, but had her hands crossed behind her back, careful not to touch the contents.

"Well, I did have to rummage through some recycling bins for this game," said Gunn, "by the way and obviously, I'll do the clean up. But first, I got a present for our girl here."

Jenny's eyes lit up, and Gunn recognized another Burkle smile. But when he gave her the box, it flipped to confusion.

"What's this?" Jenny asked in a practiced neutral tone.

"Called a Transformer," Gunn slid the toy out of the box, "this bad ass is named Optimus Prime. He goes from robot…" Jenny watched Gunn manipulate the toy into becoming something else, "…to a truck."

Jenny took the toy from Gunn's hand, and began examining it with laser-like intensity. She took the toy from robot to truck and back, studied the joints, observed the angles of the plastic mold, all while reconstructing it in her mind's eye, and thinking of ways to improve it, where there was too much plastic or not enough.

Jenny did that for a whole five minutes before Angel cleared his throat, and Jenny's attention snapped back to them.

"This is mine?" Jenny asked carefully.

"'Course, unless you don't want it," Gunn said.

"I didn't say that."

"All yours then," Gunn said, "I got you something else, but you gotta play me for it."

"Play?" Jenny looked at Gunn, then to Angel. It wasn't that the little girl was unfamiliar with the concept, far from it. Even as a slave they managed to create a few games here and there, during the slow season, and during a few stolen moments during the harvest.

However, she was unfamiliar with it being spoken out loud. Overseers only tolerated it when they didn't see it, or there wasn't something else to be done. And like an obscenity, it was never spoken of aloud, especially in the presence of an authority figure. It just wasn't done.

But Jenny observed Angel's lack of response, his complete indifference and decided to go with it.

"Sure," Gunn picked up a beer bottle and tossed it across the room, where it landed in the bucket with a crash.

Jenny covered her mouth, shocked at what she'd just seen.

"See, like that," Gunn explained.

"But Gunn, that's glass," Jenny whispered anxiously.

"Yup," Gunn picked up another bottle, and tossed it towards the bucket. This time he was off by a foot, and it smashed against the cement floor.

"But…" Jenny looked at the beer bottles again, and then to Angel.

"It's fine," Angel said, while making a mental note not to allow Jenny within five feet of what would doubtlessly be a pile of broken shards within the next few minutes.

"Just don't go using Angel's regular stuff for this," Gunn said. He offered Jenny a bottle, and the young girl took it carefully.

Jenny looked at the glass. On Pylea, glass was a sign of status, of wealth. It was art with function or family heirlooms that had endured for generations, created by master artisans that trained for years to master the form. Jenny had seen a dozen slaves traded for one single window pane, and remembered what happened to H'orke, how he suffered when he smashed a bottle. And he was the Overseer's son.

Jenny didn't even try to make the bucket. She pitched the beer bottle across the room like a base ball where it smashed against the wall into a million pieces.

"Ha!" Jenny was so giddy with excitement, she was literally shaking.

"Come on, girl, try to get the bucket," Gunn smiled, as he tossed another one underhanded.

Jenny was barely listened. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her blood coursing with excitement. The act of destroying what was a status symbol of the rich and powerful, the same people responsible for everything wrong in her life up until now, was an intoxicating rush literally unlike anything Jenny had ever felt before.

When it was all over, Jenny was gasping for breath, and barely even aware that she'd only tossed one bottle out of two dozen into the bucket.

"Well, that's a good first game," Gunn said and then turned to Angel, "so ref, who won?"

"That's pretty obvious to me," said Angel, "Jenny won."

"I…didn't," Jenny said, "I didn't conform to the rules, I'm sorry…"

"You win because you don't have to clean up," Angel said.

"Sounds fair to me," Gunn shrugged. He picked up a plastic gold tiara he'd bought from a party supply store, and carefully handed it to Jenny.

The little girl's eyes lit up. She was smart enough to recognize the cheap plastic and fake jewels as exactly that, but it was still jewelry, it was still pretty and it was meant for her.

Jenny put it on carefully, as if it were a real crown and picked up her transformer.

"Thank you, Gunn," Jenny said.

"No problem, kid," Gunn patted her head playfully, "just don't go playing this game with Angel's good stuff or without permission, okay?"

"I won't. I know that destruction of property is only allowed in a certain context," Jenny said softly, "but, I meant thank you for loving my mother, for making her happy. You must have been very close."

"Yeah, we were," Gunn said, with his best poker face.

"Can I go to my room?" Jenny asked.

"Of course," Angel said.

The two watched Jenny rush off with her new possessions.

"If there was any doubt in my mind, there ain't now," Gunn said, "that girl is too smart. You know that, right?"

"Ooooh yes," Angel drawled, "still, good work, Gunn. How'd you know? I'd completely forgotten that glass used to actually worth something, a few hundred years ago."

"Hey, if you thought I knew to do that because of some inside Fred info, you're wrong there, boss man," Gunn replied, "I just remember doing it as a kid. Breaking stuff and not getting in trouble? Don't have to have been a slave to enjoy that. Honestly?" Gunn shook his head, "I wonder…I wonder if we even knew Fred."

"Don't," Angel growled, "none of us are perfect. You traded your soul for a damn truck, I tried to lose mine with Darla, Wes kidnapped my infant son, and Cordelia didn't warn us what would happen to Fred, choosing instead to send us after the Circle. We all have our reasons for our secrets, but that doesn't change who we are fundamentally. We knew Fred, even if we didn't know everything."

"Yeah, yeah you're right," Gunn shrugged, "The tiara was a Fred thing, though."

"Well, whatever, I'll take it. I think we've made more progress today than the last few weeks that she's been with us."

A pause.

"But that doesn't mean you're going to help me clean up, are you?"

"Are you kidding?" Angel produced a broom and dustpan, and Gunn realized he hadn't even noticed that Angel must have done his disappearance thing during the game to retrieve them, "I'm just the ref. You lost, fair and square."

"'Course, make the black man do the manual labor," Gunn groused, as he went to work.

"Sorry, that doesn't work on me," Angel said, "I ate too many slave owners to feel guilty about slavery. They tasted as rich as you might expect."

"Heh, yeah you're a vampire Dr. King," Gunn dumped a load of glass into the bucket, "I know you don't wanna hear this, Angel, but keeping a kid here? That causes all kinds of issues. You want me to cite all the laws we're breaking just keeping her by alphabetical order, or state and Federal?"

"I know," Angel rubbed the back of his neck.

"And, ya know, Illyria. She says she doesn't have Fred's memories anymore, but she straight up told me Fred was the only reason she didn't kill me. And what happens when Jenny sees her?"

"I know, Gunn," Angel said under his breath.

"And when she gets older, she'll need a social security number if she wants a job besides killing creepy crawlies."

"I know!" Angel shouted, "and there are a million other things that have to be sorted, Gunn. Believe me, I know. Do you really think I haven't brooded about all this?"

"Fair enough."

"Just sweep. We made a lot of progress today, and you're harshing my buzz."

"Harshing your buzz? You get that from Faith?"

"Yeah."

"Well, give it back."

oooOOooo

Later

When Angel went to check in on Jenny, he couldn't help but smile as he found her sprawled out on the floor, Optimus Prime clenched in one hand, a dozen odd stretches relating to said toy scattered across the floor, along with two small empty jars of peanut butter.

Angel gently pried the toy from her hand, removed the tiara from her head, and scooped her up. Jenny barely stirred as he put her to bed. He pulled the covers over her, and gently tucked her in. He picked up the peanut butter jars, turned off the lights and closed the door.

Angel stood there, drinking in the moment, savoring the illusion that everything was normal and he was just a regular adoptive father who'd put his little girl to bed.

Angel knew it was just an fantasy. He had enemies, enemies that would come at him through her. Some already had. Jenny was half demon in a world of humans, and unlike most she couldn't hide it. And the only right he had to even be her adoptive father, beyond how he loved her mother, was the fact was the fact that he was strong enough to protect her from the people who wanted to hurt her because of him.

The irony was not lost on Angel.

But today, after hearing her heart pounding in excitement, seeing the pure joy on her face, today he could ignore all that. Today, he was a father who put his daughter to bed.