Disclaimer: The title came from Disney's 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame', so I don't own it, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel' came from Joss Whedon, so I don't own them, and 'Charmed' came from Constance M. Burge, so that's not mine either. Oh, and the spell to allow Doyle and Phoebe to see through each other's eyes at least partly came from 'The Way Things Should Be' by Lady Callista, which can be found on the 'Land of Denial' Buffy/Angel fanfic archive. Anyway, enjoy.
Feedback: It's here to be read; let me know that it has been
Girl version of Chandler: He'll get better in the end, but I'm sorry to saw there won't be a Spike/Paige pairing; I just don't see them together
inumiko7: Glad to hear I've given you something enjoyable for your earlier delves into this kind of fanfic
Jedi-Princess: Oh, they're going to work together very well; in fact, if all goes well, they'll practically be brothers at the end of this tale…
Gregdoreza: 'Painful' is not going to be the word, believe me…
Majin Gojira: I see… Well, I'll bear that comment about the page breaks in mind, but I can't make any promises (Oh, and regarding the mixed mythology thing, I'm trying as well as I can to provide decent explanations for the contrasting pasts of the two shows, I assure you)
Maricole: Trust me, when these guys work together, you'd need to be a flippin' GOD to stop them… And, as Glory would testify, sometimes even that isn't enough
pinkyblue-ice: Here it is
wackycavegirl: In a tick; we JUST need to get Doyle in the base first…
Stantonluver: Thank you for being my most interesting reviewer
Ashirum: Well, glad to hear I introduced you to a new kind of fanfic; hope I continue to live up to your expectations
What Makes a Monster?
Angel was barely able to choke back a laugh at what he'd just heard.
The coincidences just seemed to be piling up today…
"You fell in love with a witch?" he asked Belthazor- no, Cole, he reminded himself; Belthazor had asked Angel to call him Cole after they'd shaken hands- incredulously. "You!"
"So?" Cole asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's hardly a crime, is it?"
"No, it's not that," Angel said, waving a hand dismissively. "I mean, it's unexpected, yeah, but it's more the sheer coincidence factor of it…"
"Why's it a coincidence?" Cole asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's just that… well, I used to date the current Vampire Slayer," Angel said, shrugging casually.
Cole's jaw dropped. "The Slayer!" he said, staring at Angel incredulously. "The Vampire Slayer? 'Into every generation there is a Chosen One', yadda yadda yadda?"
"No, the other mythical Slayer," Angel said, rolling his eyes mockingly.
The two chuckled slightly at that. Having realised that they couldn't get out of their prison, since their captors would never have stuck them anywhere that could be weak enough to let them get loose, the two ex-murderers had decided to spend some time getting to know each other, and, somehow, the conversation had gone over to the respective women in their lives.
Then Cole's grin faded, and he looked back at Angel.
"You used to date the Slayer?" he asked, looking at his new friend curiously. "What happened?"
Please don't let it be that she couldn't cope with your evil past and dumped you… he thought to himself; if it could happen to Angel, it could probably happen to him…
"It was a clause in the curse that gave me my soul," Angel replied, sighing slightly before continuing. "The demon within me was meant to be subjected to constant torment, with the soul keeping it down. If I ever experienced true happiness, even for a moment, the curse would be broken, and I'd be back to the way I was before."
"Ah," Cole said, nodding sympathetically at Angel. "And would I be right in guessing that you triggered the clause?"
"Yeah," Angel said, nodding slightly sadly. "One of her friends managed to cast a spell to put my soul back, but… but we just couldn't go back to the way things had been before. Knowing we could never go further, but always wanting to…"
He looked up at Cole, a slightly envious expression in his eyes. "At least you never had that to worry about; you were born with your soul, and you've never had your demon side take it away."
Cole shook his head. "Trust me, Angel; it's not as easy as you'd think," he said. "I'm barely in control at the moment; it takes a real effort to force Belthazor to the background when I'm in this form. If it wasn't for this bloody chip shutting down my shifting abilities, I'd-"
Angel held up a hand. "Wait a minute; the chip's stopping you from returning to human form?"
"Yeah, it is; so what?" Cole said, shrugging as he looked back at Angel. "I mean, they know about my shimmering ability; I just figured the lack of shifting was a side-effect. After all the principles are essentially the same; both involve my molecules getting reorganized."
"In the exact same way?" Angel said, looking at Cole quizzically. "I don't pretend to be an expert on magic, but surely those two 'tricks' or yours can't be exactly the same…"
He looked Cole directly in the eyes as he spoke, the better to emphasise his next point. "There's something going on here that we don't know about."
"Indeed," a voice said from above them. "But then again, you demons are so idiotic that I'm surprised everything about this facility doesn't go over your heads."
Cole and Angel glanced up instantly, their eyes falling on some kind of speaker that was located in the centre of the roof; it seemed to be fairly haphazardly placed, suggesting that it was a relatively recent addition to the room.
Angel and Cole glanced at each other inquiringly, and then Angel stood up to address the speaker better.
"Who are you?" he said to the speaker. "And how much did you hear?"
"Enough to know that you're both smarter than we thought, and that you're not as dangerous," the voice said; the two of them now noticed that it was a woman speaking, although she was apparently an older woman, maybe in her fifties. "I mean, thinking that you could actually get involved with a witch and a Slayer? Belthazor, witches don't exist; Angelus, there is no way a Slayer would ever get involved with something like you. You're all freaks, abominations of nature. No one wants you, no one ever will."
Angel chuckled. "Shows you what you know," he said, looking up at the speaker. "You really need to learn not to see everything in terms of black and white; there's such a shade as grey, you know?"
"Exactly," Cole said, smiling over at Angel before looking back up at the speaker with a glare in his eye. "Did it ever occur to you that even demons can change, or are you so caught up in your bigotry that you can't see beyond physical appearances?"
The voice chuckled. "Don't presume to compare our treatment of you to human treatment of the Negro, Belthazor," she said. "You're not human; you're no better than animals."
Then the tone changed, going from mocking to inquisitive. "But on that topic, would you mind telling us exactly what you have from us?"
"What?" Angel said, looking at Cole in confusion. "What do you mean, what we have from you; we never even knew you existed until you jumped us!"
"I meant from humanity, Angelus," the voice said. "We studied blood samples from the two of you, and your DNA shares a feature with some humans that no other vampire or demon that we have studied has ever possessed. What we wanted to know was if you knew each other and had received whatever enhancement you received in some vast plot to upgrade the demon race, or if this was a mere fluke of nature for some reason."
"Wait a minute…" Cole said, looking over at Angel, suspicion dawning in his eyes. "Something in our DNA, that no other demon or vampire has? You think…?"
"Anything's possible," Angel said, as he turned back to look at the speaker. "You know, you could have saved a lot of trouble by asking us that question. I can assure you that we do have something no other demon has, but we got it independently, and it doesn't make us superior to other demons; just… different, I guess."
"Really?" the woman said, in a tone that suggested she wouldn't have believed what Angel and Cole would say next even if they told her the sky was blue. "And what would that be?"
"Souls," Cole said, shrugging casually.
There was a pause for a moment or two, and then the woman laughed. "No, seriously; what does the extra DNA give you?" she asked again, sounding as though she was humouring a maniac.
Angel rolled his eyes as he looked over at Cole. "Why is it nobody ever believes that story?" he asked, as though it a common complaint. "Honestly, God may have fallen out of favour in the modern day, but surely people'd twig on the fact that there must be some evidence as to why so many used to believe in the soul?"
"Got me, Angel, m'man," Cole said, shrugging in a dismissive manner.
"Just stop your lies, please; this isn't helping your situation," the woman said, sounding more aggravated than she had earlier. "Not only do souls not exist, but even if they did, you couldn't have them; you're all demons, freaks of nature. Even my basic knowledge of religion tells me that only humans have souls-"
"And what do you think I used to be?" Angel asked, rolling his eyes in frustration. "Think I was grown somewhere? I was born a human, you know."
"And do you honestly think every demon just wants to kill humans?" Cole asked, looking up at the speaker as well. "You may not be right in my case, but you've made a valid point; having aspects of humanity can help demons predict how humans might react to certain situations."
"Now then; could you just let us out of here, or do we have to get nasty?" Angel asked the speaker, deciding they'd been teasing their unknown antagonist for long enough. "And trust me; you don't want to see us getting nasty."
"On the contrary, Angelus," the voice said. "I think it's time we sent you two to your new cell."
"Oh, and you think we'll just go quietly?" Cole put in. "You're dumber than I thought!"
The voice chuckled. "You seem to be forgetting, Belthazor, we have some very… lucrative means of keeping you under control…"
Suddenly, blinding pain tore through Angel and Cole's skulls. Instantly, their hands clasped their foreheads, as though trying to force the pain out, but it was no good…
"Once and for all, you're sure this spell's only temporary, right?" Doyle asked, as he stood nervously in the middle of the circle that Paige, Piper and Willow had formed around him and Phoebe. Since Phoebe was involved in the spell as well as Doyle, Willow had volunteered to act as a stand-in for her in the Power of Three to cast this spell.
"Um… yeah, it should be," Phoebe said, looking back at Doyle with a smile to reassure him. "Trust me; we can void it any time we want. We'll just maintain it long enough to track where you go, and then we'll take things from there."
"Can we get on with this?" Anya asked, from where she was slouched against Xander. "I'm getting horny; Xander and I haven't had sex for eight hours."
"Um… OK…" Piper said, glancing over at Buffy. "Is she always like that?"
"Yeah, pretty much," Buffy said, shrugging dismissively. "Trust me; you get used to it. Anyway, you ready."
"Oh yeah," Piper said, nodding at Buffy before glancing over at Paige and Willow. "Ready?"
The other two witches nodded, and Piper glanced and Phoebe and Doyle. "You two?"
They both nodded, maintaining eye contact at the same time; for this to work, the two Seers had to be exactly eye-to-eye.
"Right then," Piper said, as she stood back and, holding out her arms, joined hands with Paige and Willow as they began to speak.
"In this night and in the hour,
I call upon an Ancient Power.
O Goddess Bride and Consort Bright,
I ask you now to bring your light.
Let these Seers see through other's eyes.
Grant me your sight, O ye most wise."
After the first words had been spoken, a yellow energy ball formed in between Phoebe and Doyle, sending out brief sparks as the spell progressed. As it neared its conclusion, a bolt shot out from either side of the ball to connect with Phoebe and Doyle's left eyes before the spell finished and the ball vanished.
Doyle and Phoebe looked over at each blankly for a moment or two, and then Doyle spoke.
"Am I really that pale?" he asked Phoebe, looking at her inquiringly.
Phoebe shrugged. "Hey, could be worse; just be glad your demon side isn't stronger." She stretched out her arms and turned around, blinking in surprise at something only she could see. "Is that really what I look like from behind?"
"Can we take it the spell worked?" Leo asked, looking at his sister-in-law with a slight smile on his face; even in the middle of a crisis, some things couldn't change.
"Oh yeah…" Doyle said, rubbing his left eye and earning a scolding look from Phoebe.
"Can't a girl have any time to relax?" she said to him, before noticing the scolding expression on Buffy's face and relaxing. "Chill out, OK; I'm as concerned about this as you, remember?"
Buffy seemed about to reply to that, but, in the end, she just sighed, smiled apologetically at the witch, and glanced over at Doyle.
"It's sundown," she said to the half-Irish half-Brachen half-breed. "Ready to go out and get caught?"
Doyle swallowed. "Ready as I'll ever be," he said. Then he turned around at looked over at Cordelia. "'Delia, if I don't-"
Cordelia clapped a hand over his mouth, looking him in the eyes.
"Say anything like that, and you definitely won't, OK?" she told him.
Then she smiled at him, took her hand back, and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek.
"Besides, if you don't get back, how'll you ever know what the full package is like?" she asked him.
Doyle smiled briefly at her, and then turned around and walked out of the small room.
As he stepped out of the door, Buffy glanced over at Giles.
"Shouldn't some of us follow him?" she asked. "You know, just to make sure things go well?"
Giles shook his head. "We have a good plan; we can't afford to jeopardise it by devoting excess numbers to it," he said. "Doyle can manage on his own, I'm sure."
Buffy knew Giles was right; they couldn't afford to chop and change their attack strategy just because she felt like it.
Still…
There were times when the heart just contradicted the head, wasn't there?
