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
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Sent to the Witch
As Paige slowly blinked her eyes open after another quiet night's sleep, she rolled over dazedly in bed, wishing she could just have another few minutes' rest before she actually had to get up and start the day. She knew she had to get up- even after arguing Phoebe down to allowing her to show up late at the rehearsal the night before due to her needing to check over some important paperwork at the office, she still had to show up- but, right now, she couldn't bring herself to care. All she wanted was to rest for a bit longer, and then, after a decent day's work, visit a church to help her sisters prepare for the second Charmed-One-wedding…
Then her eyes fell on something that was currently lying on her pillow, and she sat bolt upright, staring in shock at the object in her hand. It was a piece of paper, about average size, with a charcoal drawing of her face as she lay asleep on her bed. The picture was incredibly detailed, of course, but that wasn't what really drew Paige's attention to it.
It was the signature in the bottom right-hand corner.
It was Angelus's signature; it was too much like Angel's to be anything but.
He'd been in her room last night…
For a moment, Paige was tempted to just drop everything and head straight down to Piper and Phoebe to let them know what had happened; after all, the sooner they attended to anything Angelus-related, the better, as far as she was concerned.
However, after a moment's pause, she decided not to mention anything at the immediate moment. If she didn't leave soon, she'd be late for work, and she had enough problems to be dealing with without losing her job on top of everything else. Besides, Piper had to get in to P3 to check out arrangements for tonight- even if she wasn't going to actually be in the club, she preferred to see for herself that things were working out- and Phoebe was already rushed off her feet trying to get things ready for the wedding; she didn't want to trouble them about something that they couldn't do anything about at the immediate moment.
So long as she stayed in the sunlight for the rest of the day until she could get in contact with her sisters, she was pretty sure she'd be OK…
Despite all her resolutions not to think about the problem that she'd been confronted with upon waking up, Paige found her mind constantly turning back to it whenever she found herself with nothing to do at the office.
She just couldn't understand it; why had Angelus not just turned/killed/done whatever he wanted to her? It would have been so easy to take her out before anyone else could realise what had happened, and, in the end, all he'd done was draw her? She wasn't sure whether to interpret that as an encouraging sign or a disturbing one; she'd known Angelus was at least slightly 'interested' in her- if that was the right term to use- since he'd expressed a certain interest in turning her during the fight in Union Square, but to this extent? He'd seemed perfectly interested in taking her alive during the fight back then, and the only reason that made sense was if he wanted to change her later. Did he want to torment her the way he'd tormented Drusilla, or had he just not felt in the mood to turn her at the time?
Either way, as Paige drove towards the church where Piper and Phoebe were planning the wedding details, shee was convinced of two things; she was definitely mentioning this to her sisters, and she was definitely keeping her window locked tonight until they found a more permanent solution. She didn't know whether that would discourage Angelus from getting into the room, but at least she'd have a bit more warning when he broke the glass; given that him doing that couldn't fail to wake her up, she could probably orb herself to safety before he could… do anything.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but at least it was something until they could get something better sorted out.
As she entered the church, Paige smiled slightly as she heard Phoebe panicking about some of the wedding arrangements as Piper offered up suggestions; evidently her sister was still as anxious to have the perfect wedding as ever.
"No, we can't release balloons either!" Phoebe protested as she looked at Piper, neither of them having apparently registered Paige's presence yet. "They float to the ocean and the whales mistake them for squid and I can't be thinking about whales washing up on the beach during my wedding, you know what I mean."
"Honey…" Piper said, leaning over to place a comforting hand on her sister's shoulder, "I know you want the perfect day but you need to relax a little bit… and breathe, OK? Breathing's good, breathing is your friend…"
"Geez, you're really going all out on this, aren't you?" Paige asked, smiling slightly at her sisters as she entered the church. "I mean, is this a wedding or a coronation?"
"Where's my dress?" Phoebe asked, turning to look directly at Paige before she could say anything else.
Paige could have kicked herself; all that effort to figure out how to tell them about the picture Angelus had left her, and she went and forgot the one thing she'd been asked to do for the wedding?
"Uh… I don't have it," she said, looking awkwardly at her sister, holding up a hand to stop her reply. "Look, I'll get it on my way to the rehearsal dinner tomorrow; I had something on my mind that kinda drove that out of my mind…"
"In what way?" Piper asked, looking anxiously at her youngest sister, Phoebe's wedding apparently forgotten in light of this new news. "Angelus-related issue, work-related issue, or what?"
"Angelus," Paige sighed, as she reached into her bag and pulled out the drawing he'd left her the night before. "He left this in my room last night."
Phoebe blinked in shock at the sight in front of her.
"Oh my God…" she whispered softly, as she reached over to pick up the paper before looking back at Piper and Paige. "But… can't he only get in if someone invites him?"
"He told me that's only valid the first time around; once you've invited him in once, he can come in whenever he likes afterwards," Paige explained, as she looked anxiously at Phoebe. "Think you can whip up something that'll cancel his invitation?"
"Would that even be possible?" Phoebe replied, her gaze refocusing on her half-sister- she'd been glancing around the church, clearly only half-listening to Paige as she fretted about the upcoming wedding arrangements. "I mean, we can't give Angel back his soul…"
"Look, Leo said that the only reason that won't work is because vampires are naturally soulless," Piper said, looking reassuringly at her sister. "They're also naturally not meant to be able to get into houses, so it's not like we're trying to change the natural order; we're just trying to restore it."
"Oh, that simple, huh?" Phoebe said, before she leant forward and sighed slightly. "God… can't we have anything be simple for once? I mean, I just want tomorrow to be perfect, no glitches- natural or supernatural, you know? No magic, no ghosts, no need for spells… and now I've got to whip a spell to keep Angelus out?"
"Hey, if it's that much of a bother, Paige and I can whip something up ourselves-" Piper began.
"No, no, I can do it tonight," Phoebe said, shaking her head reassuringly as she looked at her older sister. "I'll come up with the spell tonight, but after that… I just want tomorrow to be nice and… well, normal."
"Honey," Piper said, reaching over to pat Phoebe reassuringly on the shoulder, "I promise you we will have your perfect wedding. By this time tomorrow, you and Cole will be joined in holy matrimony."
Paige didn't say anything to that; as much as she wished Phoebe and Cole could have the happiness that she and Angel seemed to have been denied, she couldn't shake the slight, nagging feeling that something was going to go wrong with this whole situation.
Of course, it could have just been her paranoia over the whole 'Angelus can get into my room any time he wants and is making me terrified by not instantly killing me' thing she had going on right now, but she didn't think that was all it was.
A few hours later, however, with Leo, Darryl and Victor having gone off to Cole's hotel room for the bachelor party, and Phoebe having simply gone to her room to try and come up with a decent 'uninvite Angelus' spell, Paige found herself sitting in her bedroom, anxiously studying the tarot cards Phoebe had given her and Piper as a pre-wedding gift, anxiously dealing them out over and over.
No matter how many times she dealt them, she always got the same three cards; the Lovers, Despair, and Death.
Great… she sighed, as she stood up, tucked the cards into her pocket- she had yet to change out of her pyjamas- and headed for Piper's room; in Phoebe's current state, Paige doubted she'd care for a visitor right now.
"Piper," she said as she entered the room, the eldest Halliwell turning from the mirror where she'd been brushing her hair to look at her. "Look, I can't keep this to myself any longer; this," she continued, brandishing the cards in her hand, "is Phoebe and Cole's tarot reading; they were lovers in the past, despair fills their present, but this is their future."
"Death?" Piper said, studying the card in question before she shook her head slightly. "Oh please, that looks nothing like death. Prue met him; I know what-"
"No," Paige interrupted- even after Angel's help, she still found any reference to Prue a bit of a touchy subject- as she tapped the cards in her hand impatiently. "You're missing the point; this is a bad omen."
"Not necessarily…" Piper said, shrugging slightly.
"Look," Paige continued, resolved to get her point across. "Cole's a nice guy, fine, whatever. But face the facts, he was the world's greatest demon for what, a century?"
"Yeah, but we've been through all that," Piper replied, before she looked slightly awkwardly at Paige, clearly uncertain whether she should bring up what she was about to say before deciding to go for it. "Anyway, I thought… y'know… Angel helped you get through that whole… 'anti-Cole' thing."
For a moment, Paige allowed herself a moment's regret at the thought of her practically-deceased boyfriend- his body didn't have a soul; that counted as 'dead' to her these days- before she replied.
"He did help, don't get me wrong- kind of hard to be mad at Cole for stuff like that when I'm willing to give Angel a shot- but a century's worth of blood and bad karma, you don't just walk away from that," she replied, sighing slightly as she reached over to finger the claddagh ring Angel had given her; even after he'd gone evil, she had yet to take it off. "I mean, look at Angel; spent a century or so eating rats and other stuff like that, and then went evil again because of some screwed-up loophole in his curse."
"He ate rats?" Piper said, looking at her sister in shock.
"What else was he gonna eat; they didn't exactly hand blood out to just anybody back then, you know," Paige retorted, before she shook her head and forced herself back to the issue at hand. "I dunno… maybe the whole Angelus thing's just got me feeling a bit paranoid and I'm picking these out because they're tuned to my bad mood…"
A sudden scream from upstairs cut off any further conversation between the two of them, prompting them both to drop whatever they were holding- the hairbrush and the cards- and hurry towards the attic, all thoughts of tarot readings forgotten.
As Cole slammed the Lazarus demon against the wall, he once again found himself wishing that he still had access to Belthazor; if nothing else, the demon's red-skinned appearance had always been far more intimidating that his human one, no matter how much malice he controlled.
"I just did what the Seer told me!" the Lazarus demon protested as Cole glared at him.
"Did she tell you to kill my fiancé?" Cole retorted, his eyes narrowed as he stared at his new minion (A small part of him was still shocked at how easily he was adjusting to his new role). "'Cause that's what you almost did!"
"The Source before you would've rewarded me for killing one of those witches!" the Lazarus demon retorted.
"The old Source," Cole retorted, placing a heavy emphasis on 'old' as he threateningly raised one hand to generate an energy ball, "was reckless, and now he's dead. You want to follow him into his grave."
"No," the Lazarus demon replied simply.
"Then let's get this straight," Cole stated, as he lowered his hand, the energy ball vanishing in the process. "You work for me now. Do what I tell you, I guarantee you will never see another cemetery. But hurt my bride again and I will bury you myself."
With that, he hurled an energy ball at the demon, staring scornfully at it as it crumbled into dust.
"Stay down until I need you," he said grimly, before he turned to look at the Seer, who was now standing behind him. "And as for you, how dare you unearth a Lazarus demon!"
"We needed a creature that could lure your witch into the cemetery," the Seer replied casually.
"But a Lazarus demon?" Cole retorted. "We could have just had Angelus sire a couple of vampires in that area; that would have been a bit less obvious-"
"The vampire is too unpredictable; we cannot allow him more leeway than he already possesses," the Seer retorted, staring grimly at Cole as she spoke. "The witches must believe they are under attack for your plan to work-"
"There's no plan with Phoebe dead," Cole retorted. "And you know as well as I do that Angelus isn't going to be happy if Paige gets caught in the crossfire either; for better or worse, we have to keep both of them alive."
"I'm beginning to wonder if you can handle your new mantle of power," the Seer sighed, shaking her head slightly as she studied Cole.
"Are you questioning my leadership?" the former lawyer growled, taking a step towards the Seer as he raised one hand threateningly.
"No," the Seer replied simply. "You inherited the world's evil; I'll follow that anywhere."
"But…?" Cole prompted.
"Cole," the Seer replied simply. "He's still alive inside you… and not only does he love the witch, but he saw the vampire's ensouled self as his friend. When you were a demon, his love for her ruined more than one good plan, and with the rogue element of the vampire added, given your past bond with his 'good' side…"
"My relationship with Cole is different now," Cole said, shrugging dismissively; he only thought of himself as 'Cole' because he just couldn't think of himself as 'the Source'. "Cole's voice used to scream inside my head, but now it's just a whisper. We can use his feelings to control her-"
"Great plan; did you come up with that before or after I left Paige my little sketch?" a voice said from off to the side. "I mean, God, how did you survive this long with that kinda imagination…?"
"Angelus," Cole said simply, as he turned around to look at the vampire as he casually leant against the wall of his cave. "May I ask how you got down here?"
"Oh, hitched a lift with a willing demon and then broke his neck; I figured you'd be willing to send me back up afterwards," Angelus replied, shrugging dismissively as he walked towards Cole. "Just wanted to make sure you guys are clear on the terms of our little… 'deal'; Paige is mine."
"If this is about your invitation rights having been revoked-" Cole began.
"What, that?" Angelus snorted. "Nah, I'll get around that somehow; there's other ways to torment her than just the picture thing anyway. What I meant was the Lazarus demon attack I heard about; Paige came way too close to dying for my liking there, Coley-boy…"
"It won't be happening again, I can assure you," Cole replied simply. "I've made it clear that the Charmed Ones are not to be harmed until the time is right; Piper may be fair game, but the odds of another sister getting caught in the crossfire are too great for me to risk allowing another attack."
"Good," Angelus replied nonchalantly. "Right then, just send me up and I'll get back to my own plans; OK?"
"Agreed," Cole said, waving his hand briefly to send his former friend back up to the real world before he shimmered back up himself.
He trusted Angelus to stick to their deal- as much as one demon could ever trust another, of course- but he still wouldn't care to leave him alone up on Earth unless he had to; what the vampire could dare to try without Cole there to remind him of the consequences he would have shuddered to think if he was the kind to shudder in the first place.
That vampire was making things remarkably more difficult; if it wasn't for that damn blackmail threat- coupled with the fact that he'd so far evaded every attempt Cole had made to contact him-, Cole would have just killed him already.
But even as he returned to Halliwell Manor, shifting his appearance to resemble Piper and implement the next stage in his plan, he had to wonder if the Seer had a point; did a part of him want Angelus to stay alive out of some hope that Angel- the only person Cole had ever met who could understand his pain- would come back?
He didn't know.
As Paige blinked her eyes open the next morning, the first thing she registered was that she'd fallen asleep while on demon watch.
The second thing was that Phoebe was screaming again.
"Look at me!" she yelled as she came charging into the hall, waving in frustration at her suddenly pimple-covered face while holding a bottle of what Paige recognised was the face-cream she'd prepared for her sister a few days ago. "What are you trying to do, deliberately screw up my wedding?"
"Hey, I fixed the wedding dress!" Paige retorted; she knew that she should be frustrated at herself for falling asleep, but right now it was just easier to vent her frustration with herself at Phoebe, particularly after she'd only just woken up.
"Yeah, and then you put a mojo on my face cream!" Phoebe retorted, glaring in frustration at her younger sister. "Y'know, if you've got something to say, just say it!"
"Uh… pardon?" Paige asked, blinking in confusion.
"Don't think that I don't know how you really feel about Cole!" Phoebe yelled at her, ignoring Piper's attempts to calm the two of them down.
"HEY!" Paige yelled, glaring at Phoebe. "I dated a vampire, remember? What could I have against that demon?"
"Ex-demon!" Phoebe insisted.
"What, is that like ex-convict?" Paige retorted; Angel may have countered most of her arguments about why she didn't trust Cole, but if Phoebe wanted her to be honest, she was going to get what she'd asked for and more. "I mean, at least Angel very clearly wasn't Angelus; Cole still had a soul when he did all that stuff! Just because Angel didn't automatically become a hero when he got his soul back doesn't change the fact that he didn't do anything actually evil after he was cursed-"
"Look, can we just calm down-?" Piper tried to say.
"Face it, Phoebe," Paige continued, ignoring Piper's attempts to pacify them as she stared at Phoebe. "This wedding has had nothing but bad omens from the start!"
"And they all seem to be connected with you now, don't they?" Phoebe yelled at Paige. "What is it; you lose your demon boyfriend, so now they're all going to go bad? Cole is not like Angel; his soul is going to stay where it is-"
"Alright, that's it!!" Piper yelled, stepping forward to force her sisters apart as she stared in frustration at her sisters. "Break it up. You-" she said, glaring at Paige, "go back to your corner, and you-" she continued, glancing over at Phoebe, "you're gonna get ready and we're gonna put lots and lots of makeup on you, you are going to get through this wedding regardless of the pimples, and we are going to do this!"
Looking back on that idea that night at the manor,- the wedding having finally taken place at a small chapel they'd found in the cemetery where they'd buried the demon-, Paige had to wonder how things had managed to go as wrong as they had. If she had ever needed proof of Sod's Law- or was it Murphy's Law; she always got those mixed up- that everything that could go wrong would, she'd found it that day. She'd started out with no more challenging a goal than to ensure that her sister's wedding went according to plan, and now here she was, having just recovered from an invisibility-inducing spell that had gone seriously wrong, with no definite guaranteed culprit behind this whole thing?
Geez, and to think I thought that being invisible would be cool when I was growing up… Paige groaned to herself, as she sat up, clutching the back of her head where the Lazarus demon's telekinetic powers had sent her flying during their initial fight. All I wanted to do was make up for screwing up the wedding earlier with that spell, but NOOOO, the stupid demon who can only die in a churchyard actually tries to attack us in a church
She knew that it wasn't totally unexpected, of course- Angel had told her that vampires' inability to touch crosses didn't extend into an inability to enter churches, and there was no reason to assume that demons would be unable to do what vampires could at least theoretically do-, but it still got on her nerves to have things fall apart like this at the last minute. Hell, they'd actually killed the stupid demon, and now the entire wedding had come apart because its attack had forced them to get all the guests out harm's way?
There were definitely times when she preferred just kicking vampire ass; the suckers may have been physically tougher, but at least you always knew their weaknesses.
Still, she had to admit that it had been infinitely more satisfying seeing that Lazarus guy go down than it had been to see most of the vampires she'd staked collapse back into the dust they'd come from. Maybe it was just because this guy had done more to them than any of the vampires had done- Darla's attack on Piper and subsequently framing Angel for it notwithstanding, most of the vampires they'd staked had been little more than flunkies-, but seeing him go down again- this time at the hands of the demon who'd actually sent him because he'd screwed up so badly…
It really made her feel good.
She just wished she could shake the nagging feeling that something still wasn't quite right with this whole thing. The Seer may have been trying to disrupt the wedding for the reasons she claimed- why Phoebe marrying Cole on a specific day would have any impact on her abilities as a witch Paige didn't know and couldn't be bothered figuring out- but something about it didn't seem right to Paige.
"Still trusting your gut, huh?" a voice said from outside her window. "Good for you; you really don't see people acting like that often enough these days."
Paige's eyes widened in shock.
"Angelus?" she yelled incredulously, spinning around to stare in shock at the vampire currently hanging from the window-sill like some weird leather-coat-wearing monkey. "What the Hell are you doing here; we revoked your invitation-"
"What, you thought I'd leave just because I can't get in any more?" Angelus chuckled slightly as he looked at her. "There's nothing wrong with a guy wanting to keep up a good relationship with an ex, is there?"
"You're not my 'ex'; we never dated," Paige retorted, trying not to show how much his presence rattled her; in all fairness, she had hoped that he would go away if he wasn't able to get inside her room again. "I dated Angel, not you-"
"I had a few hickeys from where you got a little… enthusiastic… during our last night together that say different," Angelus retorted, smirking slightly as he looked at her, prompting a brief blush from Paige before she remembered her resolve and continued to glare at him.
"Look, do you have anything you actually want to say to me, or did you just come here to be a git?" she asked him bluntly.
Angelus chuckled. "Ah, always to the point; one of your best qualities, in my opinion," he said, before his face became more serious as he stared at her. "Just came to tell you one thing; trust your instincts. More often than not, they're a bit more reliable in this case than your sisters' are."
Before Paige could say anything else, Angelus had jumped down from the window and vanished, leaving her staring bemusedly at the area where he had once been.
Huh, she mused after a moment's stillness. That was weird… did Angelus just give me a compliment?
For a moment, she thought that he might have been lying for some reason, but then she remembered something Angel had once told her about his other self; he never lied. He bent the truth to fit his own purposes, but actually lying wasn't something he did; he either told you just enough of the truth to fit what he wanted you to think, or he didn't tell you anything.
But what did he mean by that? Paige mused to herself in frustration as she lay back down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling as she turned over what Angelus had just said to her. Trust my instincts… what could he mean by that?
The only thing her instincts were telling her right now was that she just couldn't be entirely comfortable around Cole, and that was only because-
Wait.
Could that be what Angelus was referring to?
Cole?
Outside the mansion, Angelus allowed himself a slight smirk as he studied Paige's window.
Just because he'd promised not to tell Phoebe about Cole's recent promotion to Sourcehood didn't mean he couldn't let Paige know. She'd start looking at Cole a bit more closely than she might have done otherwise, the sisters would become divided on their opinion of the former Belthazor, the Power of Three would be weakened…
And, of course, Cole would have no proof that he'd done it; he somehow doubted that Paige would tell her sisters about his little visit. After all, he hadn't been able to get into her room, they couldn't stop him regularly visiting the window, and Paige could have just ignored him rather than talking to him; she'd probably do that in the future if he tried the same 'trick' unless he gave her something interesting to listen to.
Oh yeah, Angelus chuckled to himself, as he turned around and began to walk back towards his current headquarters. This is going to be very interesting…