Disclaimer: "Angel", along with all related characters and concepts, was created by Joss Whedon and Co., so they don't belong to me, while "Charmed" characters and concepts belong to Constance M Burge. Anyway, enjoy
Feedback: As always, I'd appreciate it
The Love of a Vampire
As Cole stood grimly at the end of an upper corridor in the manor- he'd requested a bit of peace and quiet after dealing with some of the more immediate 'affairs of state' that his role demanded of him-, he tried to work out what his next move should be in this situation.
Phoebe definitely wouldn't be much help; if what he'd seen about her attitude towards his counterpart was any indication, she'd probably believe that the sky was purple before she believed anything he had to tell her about reality having been altered, and he didn't exactly have a lot of evidence to back up his claims. Angel definitely wasn't in any shape to help him, Leo wouldn't answer any calls for help, and without Leo he couldn't hope to find any of the other Halliwells to give him some kind of assistance...
Then he walked around a corner and saw Piper standing in front of a window, dressed in a leather outfit that he could never have imagined her wearing in the 'real' world with a resolute expression on her face and a cold intensity in her eyes that reminded him uncomfortably of Angelus.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, his initial thoughts about his relief at making contact with another Halliwell pushed aside by the confusion he felt at the suddenness of her appearance; somehow, based on his other self's apparently regular activities, he doubted that she'd come here for a casual visit...
"Saving my sister," Piper replied simply.
With that, she waved her hands, a powerful blast from her explosive powers striking Cole and sending him flying backwards into a cabinet behind him. For a moment he lay on the floor in a daze, trying to regain his spatial awareness- that might not have killed him, but it really hurt-, but then he looked up and saw Paige and Leo standing over him, a grim expression on Paige's face that was too much like Angel's glares for Cole to doubt what was angering her.
Piper and Phoebe might be of this world, but Paige had apparently followed him through when Gemin had cast his 'spell'...
"You're here..." he said, a slight smile on his face; after the mess his other self had made of his relationships with Phoebe and Angel, it was slightly comforting to see someone he knew who was acting the way she should, even if her expression wasn't entirely encouraging...
"Surprise," Paige said grimly, before she crouched down and grabbed his right wrist, a serrated knife slicing through his right palm and taking a piece of his flesh before he realised what was happening.
"Wait!" he gasped, clutching his bleeding hand as he looked urgently up at the half-Whitelighter, now standing alongside Leo as Piper moved to join them. "This wasn't me-!"
"What?" the three people in front of him said, each looking at him in varying stages of confusion and hostility (The fact that even Leo was looking suspiciously at him said everything Cole needed to know about his other self's life; back in reality, Leo might go along with his wife's suspicions about Cole, but he still seemed to at least try and feel sorry for him).
"Paige," Cole said, his gaze fixing on the sister in question, his senses checking the immediate area for other demons- there might be a few demons in the area, but nothing near enough for them to overhear what he was trying to say-, "I know how this looks, but I didn't do this; a vengeance demon granted my wish and turned me into the power source-"
"Sorry; a what turned you into the what?" Paige asked, looking at him in confusion. "What's that got to do with-?"
"Leo can fill you in on them later; that's not important right now," Cole said, waving an urgent hand as he looked intently at the half-Whitelighter; demons were approaching them even as they spoke, and there was only limited time left before anyone came here who shouldn't be. "He's in the basement, Paige."
Paige didn't need to ask who Cole was referring to with that comment; there was only one 'he' who sprang to mind after that statement.
"Before you get him, just keep in mind that he was that way when I got here, and I've only been in this world for a few hours; I've been trying to figure out a way to let him out without revealing to anyone else here that I'm not who they think I am-" Cole began.
"Save it," Paige said, her glare fixed on Cole long enough to make it clear that she had no interest in further protestations of guilt or innocence that may or may not be accurate before she turned to Leo. "Get me to the basement."
"Paige, we don't have-" Piper began.
"The basement," Paige repeated, glaring over at her sister with the intense stare that was one of many things she'd unofficially picked up from her boyfriend; if Cole was telling even some of the truth right now, she had to know soon.
After a moment's hesitation, Leo nodded, took her arm...
When the bright white of orb-light had cleared from her vision, Paige's eyes fell on the huddled, shaking form lying on the ground before her, and her heart felt like someone had grabbed it in their bare hands while it was still in her chest.
"Oh my God..." she said, hurrying over to crouch down beside the clearly-shaken vampire in front of her, wincing at the sight of the burns covering his chest as he turned to look at her, so much vulnerability in a body that had always shown strength even when he was dealing with the guilt and grief he'd felt after he regained his soul. "Angel...?"
"Paige...?" the ex-Scourge of Europe said, his gaze hesitant and uncertain as he looked at her, as though straining to confirm a dim memory he wasn't even sure of the accuracy of any more. "You're... you're here?"
"Yeah..." the half-Whitelighter replied, reaching out to tenderly stroke Angel's face, blinking back tears when the vampire she loved so much instinctively recoiled from the possibility of contact for a moment before regaining control of himself.
"I... I was training for you..." he said, looking at her in confusion as he slowly moved from a sitting position to his knees, his gaze still fixed on hers even as his body trembled, clearly weakened by whatever had been done to him. "I was going to help you... but the Source... his demons..."
"Oh, Angel..." Paige whispered, tears filling her eyes as she looked at the man in front of her, the man Angel might have become if he'd lost his purpose before he could even fully gain it, hanging on to something that was nothing but a memory in this world...
"Get us out of here," she said, taking a tight grip on Angel's shoulder and arm as she looked back at Leo.
"Paige, I don't-" Leo tried to protest.
"I know him," Paige said, her resolute stare at the Whitelighter allowing no room for argument as she tightened her grip on Angel's arm. "We are not leaving him here, OK; we're taking him back to P3 with us, and we are helping him."
Even as Leo conceded to her 'request' and began to orb them out of the manor, Paige just hoped that they wouldn't freak out too much when they realised what Angel was...
"OK," Piper said, looking slightly impatiently at Paige as her recently-discovered-yet-already-unnervingly-familiar alleged half-sister tossed her the last couple of ingredients for the Belthazor-vanquishing potion they'd been making, "now that we're about done here, care to explain who that guy is?"
She'd seen enough of Paige's reaction to the stranger she'd identified as 'Angel'- who was even now lying in a corner of the club, his body hunched over in a manner that clearly suggested he'd grown used to being attacked in the past- to guess that the man who'd apparently been extensively tortured in the mansion meant something to Paige in the 'real' world, but given how weird things had been- coupled with the fact that Paige had refused to allow Leo to heal the guy's injuries-, she felt that she was entitled to answers.
"Just a moment..." Paige said, looking contemplatively at the cauldron as she tossed the recently-acquired piece of Cole's flesh into it, smiling in approval at the resulting explosion. "OK, now that that's out of the way, I'll give you the basics; his name's Angel, and in the real world he runs a detective agency with me, Leo, and a guy named Doyle who doesn't seem to be here, he's my boyfriend, and he's a vampire-"
"He's a what?" Leo said (Piper wasn't sure she'd ever seen her ex-husband look as shocked as he did at that moment), standing up from where he'd been sitting silently in a corner of the ruined club to glare at the still-weakened form lying near him. "I thought-!"
"OK, before you get started on that, Angel is not Cole, got me?" Paige interjected, walking forward to stand resolutely in front of Leo. "For one thing, everything Angel did wrong as a vampire was committed before he got his soul back, and he got it as a curse-!"
"Let me guess; he was cursed because of the people he'd killed before he got it?" Piper yelled; she couldn't believe that another sister had gone and fallen for a demonic killer. "What the hell difference does that make-?"
"Because he has never killed innocent people when he had his soul, OK?" Paige yelled, her stance firm as she continued to glare at this alternate version of her eldest-surviving sister. "I get that you've got issues after the precedent Cole set, but it's not the same thing; Cole had to deal with his soul even when he was evil, but Angel doesn't do that sort of thing-!"
"I am not working with a vampire-!" Piper began.
"I am not letting the man I love get tortured because Cole made some stupid wish to some kind of vengeance demon!" Paige yelled back.
For a moment there was silence as the four people in the abandoned club looked at each other, each of them trying to work out what they could say next, until Angel broke the silence.
"Belthazor... made a wish... to make this world?" he asked, looking uncertainly up at Paige. "Does that mean... you weren't meant... to die?"
"No," Paige replied, crouching down to look at the still-weak vampire with a reassuring smile. "And you're not meant to be like this, Angel; back where I came from, you're a champion, helping us save innocents from all kinds of demons- you even risked your life to stop a life-sucking demon and helped us come up with a plan to take out a doctor who could take himself apart whenever he wanted-, and I've been dating you for... well, pretty much almost a year now."
"We... we're dating...?" Angel said, a slightly incredulous smile on his face as he looked at her. "And... and you...?"
"Know what you are?" Paige finished for him, guessing what had most surprised Angel in her last statement; if the Angel she knew still had trouble sometimes accepting that she really loved him, it was going to be a real shock for this guy to accept it after what he'd been through. "Yeah, I know what you are; after you staked Darla for me, it'd be kind of hard not to..."
"Darla?" Angel repeated, his eyes widening in surprise. "I staked her?"
"It was her or me, and you picked me," Paige confirmed with a smile.
"Hold on; you're saying that a vampire staked his sire for you?" Leo said, looking between Angel and Paige as though trying to work out if one of them was playing a joke.
"What can I say?" Paige replied. "I made an impression."
"That's... good?" Piper asked, looking uncertainly at her ex-husband.
"Vampires staking their sires are virtually unheard of; the fact that Angel defied virtually every rule of being a vampire for Paige says... well, it says a lot, anyway," Leo said, before he looked at Angel with a slightly awkward expression. "I mean, I still wouldn't exactly say I trust you- that was an alternate version of you, after all; just because you were like that there doesn't demonstrate what you're like here-, but if you're capable of something like that-"
"OK, so he's not going to kill us; getting back on track; what exactly is a 'vengeance demon' anyway?" Piper asked, looking intently at Leo; judging by the slight tension in her stance, Paige was prepared to bet that she still wasn't entirely convinced that Angel wasn't going to hurt her, but could at least accept that he wasn't going to kill them right now anyway.
"Right, sorry," Leo explained, a slightly uncertain expression on his face as he looked at Angel one last time before he turned to face Piper and Paige. "Basically, they're exactly what the title sounds like; they're demons who specialise in avenging a person's wrongs. "They're generally drawn to strong sources of emotional pain- specific demons have specific people they 'help'; I know of one vengeance demon who specialises in granting the wishes of scorned women and another who 'helps' neglected children-, and, having integrated themselves into their 'target's' lives, prompt them into making a wish that the vengeance demon will grant."
"And the catch?" Paige asked. "I mean, if they're demons, there's bound to be a catch..."
"Yeah, there is," Leo confirmed. "It's like with genies; the vengeance demon will give the person making the wish exactly what they asked for, without giving them exactly what they wanted, or maybe even take a casual comment that you made and twist it into an actual wish when you wouldn't want it to really come true..."
"Which is pretty much what they did to me," Cole's voice suddenly said from behind the group.
"What the-?" Piper began, spinning around with her hands raised in a position to use her powers, Paige and Angel already shifting into a combat stance themselves despite Paige's full awareness of just how pointless anything she could try against Cole would actually be (He might just be Belthazor right now, but even energy balls and shimmering could be dangerous if she couldn't actually do anything apart from orb herself).
"Wait!" Cole yelled, his hands out in front of him as he looked urgently between the sisters and their respective partners. "I know how this looks, but I'm not here to stop you; I just want to talk-!"
"Oh, like I should really buy that?" Paige retorted, glaring back at Cole. "You just rewrote reality to get Phoebe back; how do I-?"
"I didn't know I was talking to a vengeance demon; how was I to know that asking for things to get a bit less complicated would result in... in this?" Cole countered, waving his hands at the shattered club around him, before he shook his head. "Look, that's not important right now; what is important is that I've apparently been turned into the power source for this world-"
"Back up a minute; you're the what?" Paige asked.
"Vengeance demons are powered by a centre of some sort; female vengeance demons tend to use a necklace, but the men can use a ring or something like that," Leo explained, before his eyes widened in realisation. "But if Cole himself is the power source of this wish..."
"Exactly," Cole confirmed, his arms spread. "Vanquish me, and you stop this world; everything resets back to the way it was, apart from the fact that I'll be dead."
For a moment, Piper, Paige, Leo and Angel could only stare at Cole in varying degrees of incredulity, until Piper broke the silence.
"OK, sorry, I think I need to make sure I got this right; you're telling me that you want us to kill you?" she asked. "No offence, but after spending the last two years watching you take over the underworld-"
"I'm not that guy, Piper," Cole said, looking earnestly at her. "We might have started out as the same person, but I'm not him any more; I don't know how I reached that state, but I do know that I can't be that person now..."
"OK, so maybe you're not interested in being the demon head honcho; what about the fact that you're actually married to Phoebe?" Paige butted in, her arms folded as she glared at Cole. "Doesn't sound like you've got much reason not to like this-"
"She's only with me to keep you safe; you really think I want a relationship with someone in that kind of situation?" Cole asked, bitterly rolling his eyes as he looked back at Paige. "All I ever wanted was for Phoebe to love me the way she used to; I can't just put our old relationship back together after I made things this bad!"
For a moment, the former and now-current Belthazor looked awkwardly between the two witches, the whitelighter, and the weakened vampire, before he finally sighed and waved a hand at Angel. "Besides, even without the fact that my other self pretty much took a steamroller to my marriage... how can I have any kind of life in a world where I did that to the closest thing I ever had to a brother?"
It was the simple sincerity in that statement, more than anything else, that convinced Paige that Cole was telling the truth.
She might not entirely trust him when it came to Phoebe, but after he had sacrificed his powerless state in order to save Angel when he could have just let the vampire burn himself out, she was more willing to accept the idea that he still cared for the vampire in a less insanely dangerous way...
"You're sure about this?" she asked, reaching behind her to take hold of the cauldron with the potion in it (It might be a bit overkill, but nothing had ever been said to suggest that using too much vanquishing potion would cause problems).
"I'm sure," Cole said, lowering his hands as he stood in front of her, his expression grim as he stared her in the eyes. "Just... tell Phoebe I love her, and tell Angel... I'm sorry."
Paige could only nod briefly before she gritted her teeth and swung the cauldron around, the potion striking Cole in the chest as he stood there. For a moment, Cole just stood there as the flames of a vanquish enveloped him, clearly trying to restrain the urge to scream before he opened his mouth to roar in pain...
After a strange moment where everything around her seemed to blur, Paige found herself standing in the middle of a now-closed P3- fortunately it was the middle of the day rather than the night it had been when she left; explaining this would have definitely stretched the limits of what anyone was capable of even with magic-, Piper, Leo and Angel having vanished from their previous position behind her, without even a pile of dust to indicate the presence of what had been Cole's body in front of them.
"Whoa..." she said, smiling briefly at the site of the now-restored club, before a grimmer thought occurred to her. "Oh, please, God, tell me I'm back..."
Hit by sudden inspiration, she quickly orbed away, reappearing in Angel's apartment as her boyfriend stood in the middle of the room, currently shirtless as he worked on some moves that Paige recognised as Tai Chi.
"Wha- Paige?" Angel said, turning to look at her in surprise, only for Paige to cut conversation short as she leapt onto him and planted a deep kiss on his lips, the sight of his chest now unmarked by the scars of the torture he'd sustained in the other reality one of the best pieces of evidence she could get that she was home.
"Angel, man, we've-" a distinctive Irish-accented voice said from behind Paige, prompting her to pull her lips away from Angel's and turn her head just in time to see Doyle turning away from them with his arm pressed over his eyes. "Sorry; didn't know ye were busy..."
"DOYLE!" Paige smiled, pulling away from Angel to give the occasionally-drunk Irish Seer an enthusiastic hug. "You're back!"
"Uh... he's back?" Angel said, blinking slightly as he reached over to pick up a shirt from a nearby chair and shrug it on. "Paige, no offence, but you're the one who just vanished last night; you never showed up at P3..."
"Time must've been moving on in this reality too..." Paige mused to herself.
"What?" Angel asked.
"Long story, trust me; first priority is that there's something I want to check out, and I'd... well, I'd like somebody else there with me," Paige said, reaching out to offer Angel her hand with a slight smile. "Care to join me?"
As she stood in the silent penthouse that had once belonged to Cole, Angel alongside her, Paige wondered how she should actually feel about the way things had turned out.
OK, so they'd confirmed a while back that there was no way to take Cole's powers out without transferring them to somebody else, and Cole himself had admitted that with things the way they were for him it would only be a matter of time before he ended up reaching a point where he went more than slightly insane from the power he was trying to control...
But, on the other hand, Cole had died for them.
He'd created that alternate reality totally by accident, he'd been just as horrified at what his other self had done as the rest of them, and when faced with the choice, he'd asked Paige to kill him...
"So... that's it?" Doyle asked, looking uncertainly at the empty penthouse, the half-demon standing slightly at the back as Paige and Angel studied the building; given that Doyle had only ever known Cole while he was crazy, he was naturally more apprehensive about the prospect of running into the guy again than the other two were (Although Paige had to wonder how much of that particular fear stemmed from Doyle's own slight crush on Phoebe). "After all that, the guy dies because of some freaky temporal screw-up?"
"Sometimes, it's the things you weren't expecting that do you in," Angel said, shrugging slightly as he spoke, the grim expression on his face making it easy for Paige to guess what he was thinking about.
"Hey," she said, reaching over to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. "He wanted it that way, OK? I mean, I'm not happy that it ended that way, but... at least he's at peace now, right?"
Even as she spoke, Paige was surprised to realise that she meant it.
She might not have always trusted Cole back when he was alive, but after he'd sacrificed himself, not just because he'd never have Phoebe in that other reality, but because of what his other self had done to somebody he'd considered the closest thing he ever had to a brother...
When you got down to it, it was kind of touching, really.
She wasn't sure if Phoebe would believe her when she got around to telling her sister what had taken place, of course- Angel had always believed in whatever good remained in Cole; Phoebe's attitude towards him had been sceptical at best since he came back from the Wasteland-, but she knew the truth, and Angel and Doyle were at least prepared to try and believe her; that had to count for something, right?
"Goodbye, Cole," she said, looking around the room with a brief nod.
Wherever Cole was now, she hoped that he'd found some escape from the mental torment his powers had caused him in the last few months of his life...
AN: Well, with that out of the way, the next story will look at a first-time attempt on my part; the events of "Sam I Am" combined with "Bachelor Party", as Paige and Doyle have to face up to their respective pasts...
AN 2: To anyone who wanted Cole to live, I'm sorry, but the sheer amount of powers he'd acquired and their obvious effects on his mental state made that outcome a virtual impossibility...
If I said I have a couple of ideas for him to come back in the future, would that alleviate whatever punishment you had in mind for me?