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
"OK, so we you went to the bachelor parties, and someone tried to eat Doyle's brain?" Piper said, looking incredulously at Leo, Phoebe and Paige; Angel had taken Doyle back to his apartment to recuperate from the emotional consequences of what he'd just been through, leaving the other three to return home and tell Piper what had just happened.
"Well, in their defence, it was part of a tradition of their people; they didn't just decide to do it on a whim-" Leo began.
"They were going to cut open Doyle's skull and scoop out his brain with a soup spoon; I think I'm entitled to feel a bit offended on my friend's behalf!" Phoebe interjected, glaring over at Leo; Piper might be shocked at the news, but Doyle and Phoebe had generally struck up a closer relationship due to their shared responsibility as seers, which had left her feeling more hostile on his behalf about the recent events. "God, how can you defend that-?"
"I'm just trying to see both sides in an unusual situation, Phoebe; I'm not condoning anything," Leo said, shaking his head as he looked at his sister-in-law. "The important thing is that Harry called off the wedding, so the Straleys have no reason to go after Doyle now; it's solved, and we didn't even need to kill anyone to do it."
"Yeah, getting through something without death's always a plus," Paige said, nodding briefly before she sighed and sat back in the chair, shaking her head in frustration. "Still sucks, though; I mean, Doyle goes through all that, and he and Harry still fell apart..."
Whatever any of her sisters might have said in response to Paige's comment was interrupted when a Darklighter suddenly appeared in the room, waving his crossbow as he grinned sadistically at the sisters. Piper tried to raise her arms to fire an explosive blast at him, but her attempt was cut short when their sudden opponent fired a crossbow bolt at Piper's stomach, followed by a further two crossbow bolts aimed at Paige and Leo in rapid succession, Phoebe too stunned and on the opposite side of the table to do anything in time. She had just started to get to her feet when the Darklighter vanished, leaving her to look anxiously at her sisters and brother-in-law.
"O-kay..." Piper said, allowing Phoebe to relax slightly as she looked over at her eldest surviving sister, who at least seemed to have been unharmed by the recent attack even if the arrow that had been fired at her was still obviously lying on the ground in front of her as though it had just fallen short of the mark.
"What just-?" Phoebe began, trying to focus on the immediate anomaly; if she was going to try and save Paige and Leo, she'd like to confirm that Piper wasn't just about to suffer a delayed reaction.
"Blue force-field stopped the arrow before it could reach me; no ideas what that was apart from that it was probably your niece deciding that I'm more use as an incubator when I can't be hurt, and this really isn't the time to be talking about that," Piper said, crouching down beside her husband even as she glanced anxiously over at Paige, noting that her younger sister was still obviously in pain as Phoebe anxiously examined the arrow in her stomach before swiftly pulling it out.
Quick, but effective, the columnist reflected, glancing over at Piper as she repeated the move with the arrow sticking out of Leo's arm, briefly hurrying over to the kitchen before she came back with a couple of white towels, tying one around Leo's arm as she tossed the other- a slightly damp one, Phoebe noted- over to her. Without any other ideas, Phoebe helped Paige up onto the nearby couch and began to dab at the wound, ignoring the urge to hit something as she noted that her efforts weren't having much impact on the blood coming from the wound.
"You can't stop the bleeding, can you?" Paige said, her voice clearly weakened from the toxin now in her system.
"Just try and rest," Phoebe said, glancing over at Piper as she checked Leo's forehead. "How's Leo doing?"
"He's been better," Piper said, briefly contemplating the possibility of attempting the power-switching spell she'd used during the first Darklighter attack before dismissing it just as quickly; with the baby as developed as it was, there was no way to know what would happen to its powers if she switched with Leo that way, and she doubted that Phoebe was in a clear enough place mentally to focus on what she'd need to do to control a completely new power in the time available to them. "We've got to find Sam; I'll call Angel and let him know that we need his help."
"Should I call Doyle?" Phoebe asked uncertainly.
"No way," Piper replied, shaking her head resolutely. "I'd like his help, but I'm not tactless enough to ask a man who was nearly eaten earlier to get back into the game that quickly when we've still got a chance to sort this mess out ourselves; he needs a bit of time off after something like that, and Angel and I should be enough to track Sam down."
"Why bother?" Paige muttered, wincing even as Phoebe continued to examine her wound. "The guy bailed on us already-"
"Look, this is a long story that this really isn't the time for, so just... trust us that he will want to heal you, and we'll fill you in on the rest later, OK?" Piper said, shooting a warning glance at Phoebe as she spoke; she might recognise that Sam was their only hope, but she didn't think that revealing his connection to Paige when she was in this condition was a good idea. "Now then, just... try and sense him, OK?"
She recognised that she was gambling a lot on faith that Sam wouldn't have gone anywhere too far away from them, but in a situation like this there really wasn't that much choice; it wasn't like they had Whitelighter contacts crawling out of the metaphorical woodwork.
She just hoped that, wherever Sam was, he was still somewhere in San Francisco; if he'd gone too far away, they were really screwed...
As he hurried towards the bar that Piper had directed him to, Angel had to wonder what it said about his life when leaving his friend and partner to recover from nearly being cannibalised to bless his wife's second marriage in order to convince a guardian angel apparently experiencing a crisis of faith to save his girlfriend actually constituted a fairly quiet night.
He still couldn't quite believe that the Elders had decided to saddle Paige with an ex-Whitelighter who was apparently trying to quit his 'job' as her first charge- it seemed like a lot of pressure to put on a first-timer, in his view-, but that was something he'd ask Piper about later; at the moment, all that mattered was finding the guy so that he could help Paige and Leo recover from that Darklighter attack.
As he leapt down from the rooftops into the alley near the bar- running along rooftops might be overly dramatic, but it got the job done, and it saved him having to worry about running into anyone-, Angel's eyes immediately fell on a man in dark leather with a distinctive tattoo around his left eye who matched the description of the Darklighter that Piper said had attacked them, standing over an older man in a battered brown leather jacket with grey hair and at least a few days' worth of stubble around his chin who was lying in a heap outside the bar, a bottle of what looked like alcohol in his hand as he lay unconscious.
Even if Angel hadn't recognised the man as Sam Wilder from Piper's description, he would have stepped in on principle; the knowledge of the other man's identity just made it more personal. Jumping down to the street, Angel quickly kicked out at the Darklighter's arm, knocking the crossbow out of his opponent's grasp before he followed the kick up by grabbing the Whitelighter's arm and rapidly twisting it the wrong way. Even if Darklighters and Whitelighters shared a relative immunity to conventional injury, the subsequent scream of pain from his opponent confirmed Angel's theory that they retained the physical responses that they would have possessed in life even if the blows didn't cause the same amount of damage.
Before his adversary could retaliate, Angel grabbed him by the neck and twisted it, the Darklighter falling to the ground in silence as Angel hurried over to pick up his previously-dropped crossbow and aim it at the Darklighter's head, firing the arrow before the Darklighter before he could get up. While the arrows had obviously never been intended to be fired at the person who used them, the attack was clearly effective; the Darklighter barely had time to scream before an arrow had passed through his eye and out the back of his head. Screaming in pain, the Darklighter reached up to try and tear the arrow out, but Angel beat the dark creature to it, walking forward and yanking the arrow out of his eye before he plunged it into the Darklighter's mouth, now opened in a just-beginning scream of rage and pain, the dark magic weapon penetrating the Darklighter's brain before he could do anything to fight back. The scream abruptly terminated, the Darklighter collapsed to the ground, his body twitching slightly as he lay still in the alley.
"Sam Wilder?" Angel asked, ignoring his fallen opponent as he turned his attention to the man he'd come here to rescue. "My name's Angel-"
"Angel?" Sam repeated, rolling his eyes as he slowly sat up from the ground to glare in the vampire's direction. "Couldn't have gone for something more subtle, could they? Like trying to set me up to tell my daughter that her father's a mess-"
"Contrary to the name, I'm not one of you, but this isn't the time to talk about that," Angel said, quickly cutting Sam off mid-rant; he didn't know what the other man was talking about, but he also knew that this wasn't the time to start worrying about details like that. "Look, right now, I need you to-!"
"Sam!" Piper's voice suddenly called out, Angel glancing up just as the eldest Halliwell entered the alley from the other end, her eyes quickly falling on the two men. "Angel?"
"Just got here; ran into that guy-" Angel began, indicating where the Darklighter lay behind him, only for Piper to suddenly flick her hands, a strangled scream starting and ending almost simultaneously, leaving Angel staring at Piper incredulously. "That guy was still alive?"
"He was sitting up, even if he didn't seem to know what he was doing; I thought it would be best to take him out now before he could do anything else to you or Sam," Piper clarified as she hurried over to crouch down beside Sam with Angel. "Look, Sam, you need to get up!"
"Leave me alone..." Sam muttered, weakly struggling against Piper's grip.
"Listen to me, Paige and Leo need you," Piper said, looking urgently at him. "The Darklighter shot them; you have to heal them."
"I don't know," Sam muttered, even as Piper and Angel helped him back onto his feet. "It's been so long..."
"Well, there's no one else; you have to do it," Piper said, glaring intensely at the older man. "Look, if you think you've screwed up in the past, now would be a good time to start making amends."
For a moment, Sam just stood and looked at Piper, his gaze occasionally shifting over to Angel in the process, before he turned to walk over to a corner of the alley, tension in his shoulders and stance that made it clear he was lost in thought as he considered what he was about to do.
"You're sure that he can do this?" Angel asked Piper as Sam took a few deep breaths in a possibly futile attempt to prepare himself for the decision he was about to make. "I mean, he's not exactly in great shape..."
"He can't get much worse, and we've got a good incentive to keep him focused," Piper said, holding up a hand to stop Angel as he opened his mouth to ask for more details. "Don't ask for anything else on that topic, because I'm not answering; Paige should know before you-"
"He's her father, isn't he?" Angel said, looking grimly over at Sam for a moment, tapping his nose as Piper opened her mouth to ask how he'd known that.
"Nose knows, huh?" she said after a momentary pause, looking slightly awkwardly at the vampire.
"Pretty much," Angel confirmed, nodding grimly at the witch before he glanced back at the Whitelighter. "It's trickier to be sure when I'm dealing with adults- children are a lot easier to identify that way, but adults have normally picked up their own scent over the years-, but inherited magic like what Paige received from him has its own scent if you know what you're looking for..."
Piper didn't get the chance to ask Angel for more information on what sounded like it could be a rather interesting topic before Sam had turned around and taken hold of both them, closing his eyes and orbing away.
As soon as they'd reappeared in the conservatory, Sam released his grip on Piper and Angel's arms and hurried over to crouch down alongside Paige, his hands reaching out to take up the usual healing position over Paige's still form, only for there to be no sign of anything happening afterwards apart from his hands shaking as he held them in position.
"What's the problem?" Phoebe asked, looking in frustration at Sam.
"I can't," Sam said, sounding like he was fighting back tears.
"OK, you know what?" Angel said, walking over to grab Sam by the coat and slam him against the nearest wall.
"Angel-!" Piper began, moving towards the vampire only to be stopped by the glare the former Scourge of Europe shot in her direction before he turned back to look at Sam.
"I have had it up to here with you going on about how much of a screw-up you are, OK?" he said, his gaze fixed directly on Sam's with an intensity that Piper and Phoebe couldn't recall Angel ever showing while he was using his human face. "You've made a few mistakes and lost the people you loved; so what? I have had to live with the memory of killing my little sister for the past hundred years- to say nothing of the hundreds I killed in the century and a half between getting turned and getting my soul back-, and I never used that as an excuse to give up when someone asked me for my help!"
He knew that he wasn't exactly being totally honest about his attitude back before he'd met the Halliwells- he hadn't allowed his guilt and grief to stop him when people directly asked him for help, but he hadn't exactly gone out of his way to be in positions where people would have wanted to ask him those kind of questions anyway-, but the white lie wasn't that important right now; what mattered was making this guy get off his ass and save Leo and Paige before the Darklighter poison spread too far for anyone to help them.
"Don't you think I want to save them?" Sam retorted, staring in frustration at the vampire. "Do you think I wanted her to be part of this? She's my dau-!"
"Yeah, and I'm her boyfriend who's actually here for her, and I not going to let her die just because you can't face up to what you've done!" Angel countered, his demonic visage struggling to emerge against his better instincts even as he forced that part of himself down; vamping out wasn't going to encourage Sam to help him. "She brought this family back together when nobody could have blamed them for falling apart, and drove me to get out of the gutter just so that I could try to help her by doing nothing more than being herself; the only person you've ever failed here is you, so get off that goddamn self-loathing train you've put yourself on and get over it!"
For a moment, Sam and Angel were left staring in silence at each other, until Angel stepped back from Sam with a grim nod, leaving the Whitelighter to crouch back down beside his daughter.
"Paige," he said, looking tearfully at her, even as she stared back at him in obvious confusion. "I am so sorry."
"It's OK," Paige said, her voice low as she reached over to gently touch Sam's shoulder with the back of her hand. Even as the other three watched, white light spread from Sam's heart to envelop the rest of him, subsequently dissipating to reveal a more coherent expression on a far cleaner face than what he had possessed previously.
"What happened?" Sam said, looking down at himself in surprise.
"I think you just healed yourself," Phoebe said, smiling "Now Paige."
Looking solemnly at Paige for a moment, Sam held his hands over her and they began to glow, the familiar sound of healing magic temporarily filling the room before Sam lowered his hands, the wound in Paige's side now gone.
"Thank you," Paige said, sitting up slightly as she looked at Sam, an uncertain expression on her face as she studied the man she still didn't fully.
"OK," Piper said, urgency supplanting her usual politeness, "thanks later; Leo now."
Recognising her point, Sam walked over to Leo and crouched down beside his fellow Whitelighter, the ex-army-medic swiftly sitting up with a fully healed arm as he looked urgently at his wife.
"Piper, are you OK?" Leo asked, reaching out with one hand towards her stomach. "The baby?"
"Oh, she's fine," Piper said with a smile. "I don't think we have to worry about her at all."
Noting the stares from her husband, Paige and Angel at that comment, Piper could only shrug casually. "I'll explain later."
"So..." Paige said, looking slightly uncertainly at Sam. "What made you come back?"
Looking over at Piper and Phoebe, Sam swallowed anxiously before he turned his attention back to Paige, a resolute expression on his face.
"There's... something I should have told you earlier," he said at last.
"So," Paige said as she sat facing Sam in the conservatory the following morning- after Sam's revelation about his real identity, once Paige had recovered from her initial anger at the earlier deception she had asked for some time to think before speaking with him again-, "you're... my father, huh?"
"Yeah," Sam said, shrugging in an overly awkward manner. "You hate me, don't you?"
"Why should I?" Paige replied; directness was probably the best way to deal with the current awkwardness. "You were pretty much a stranger to me growing up, and... look, no offence, but I actually didn't spend a lot of time over the years thinking about you."
"Guess it's easier not to miss the father than the mother, huh?" Sam said with a slightly grim smile.
"I had a father," Paige said, feeling that she might as well tackle the most obvious potential concern Sam might have at this point. "One who made me proud to be his daughter, and it wasn't you."
"I... probably deserved that," Sam said, smiling awkwardly at Paige before he continued, his tone still awkward even as he was clearly resolved to say his piece. "Paige, I want you to know that giving you up was the hardest decision I ever had to make. Your mother too. If we could've done it over, we wouldn't have done it. But we weren't supposed to be together. A baby, we were afraid the Elders would find out."
"It's... OK," Paige said after a moment's pause, shrugging slightly as she looked at him. "I admit, what you did last night helped- you came through when we really needed you, after all-, but even without that... well, I understand. I really do."
"It still has to have hurt you," Sam replied.
"I used to think that you didn't matter to me at all," Paige said. "If I never met you, my life would be perfectly fine."
After a moment to give Sam the chance to take in what she'd said, she gave him a small, awkward smile. "I guess, uh, the Elders knew better after all. When you gave me up, you made a choice that gave me the most amazing gift. See, I got to have these tremendous parents and we, we loved each other fiercely."
She acknowledged that the last statement may have been a bit questionable in terms of taste, given that she was talking to her biological father, but she felt obligated to reassure him that she hadn't ended up with the stereotypical 'nightmare parents' that the foster system could produce at times...
"And now," she continued, looking reassuringly at him, "I have this whole new life with my sisters... and my boyfriend."
"What about everything that goes with it?" Sam asked, a slight edge to his expression as he looked at her.
"If this is about Angel being what he is..." Paige began.
"I'm not judging him because he's a vampire," Sam said, holding up a hand to halt her objections. "The guy saved my life and gave me a good talking-to into the bargain; be kind of hypocritical to judge him just because he's technically dead given what I am, and he's definitely shown that he's not letting what he was influence what he is. It's just..."
He swallowed slightly, looking awkwardly at the ceiling before he looked back at her. "Well, if that develops into something... long-term..."
"I know what he can't do, and I'm fine with that," Paige said, the answer coming out almost without her even needing to think about it, prompting her to briefly pause as she took what she'd just said.
It really was amazing what you could say when you weren't consciously thinking about it; she'd gone from having some slight doubts about her relationship with Angel, to realising that she wanted nothing more than to stay with Angel for as long as she possibly could.
Their relationship would never be conventional, as Sam was not-so-directly pointing out to her- Angel's soul might be pretty much permanent now, but even without the fact that Angel couldn't go out in sunlight, there were such other issues as the fact that they'd never be able to have children or Angel's lack of aging-, but Paige was fine with that; sunlight could be overrated, adoption was still an option for them if things ever went that far, and if Piper and Leo could cope with Leo technically staying the same age as he was now, then she was sure she and Angel could find a way to do the same.
Maybe she'd worried about Angel backing out on her like everyone else seemed to have done in her life on some level, but if what she'd just said wasn't a perfect example of a Freudian slip she didn't know what was; she might have convinced herself she was thinking of leaving Angel to escape being hurt again, but in the end it was nothing but old fears and issues making her more paranoid than she should be.
"I chose to be with Angel just like I choose to be a witch," she said at last. "I could've walked away, but I didn't."
She smiled at Sam as she spoke, the part of her that would always be a daughter looking forward to her father's reaction to this news. "And now I'm a detective and a Whitelighter to boot."
"You're a detective?" Sam asked, smiling at her in the most paternal manner she'd seen him express so far.
"Angel runs an agency we set up with help of a friend of ours and Leo and I work there with Doyle- another seer-; it gives us a better official cover for when we have to help people," Paige explained with a slight shrug. "I mean, a club owner, an advice columnist, and an ex-social worker don't really have much reason to be hanging about potentially supernatural crime scenes, but a P.I. and his associates do have a pretty clear reason."
"Nice idea," Sam said, nodding in understanding at her. "That's my girl."
Even if Paige knew that she didn't need it, hearing her father approve of her chosen path in life felt... good, was the only term she could really think of using; simple, but still effective.
They might have a long way to go if she and Sam were going to have any kind of relationship with each other, but they'd made a start; one thing she'd learned in this life was that you had to take everything step-by-step if you were going to make any kind of progress.
"So," Doyle asked, glancing up from his desk at the sound of the door opening, revealing Paige as she walked into the office, "how's things with your dad?"
"You heard about that?" Paige asked, looking at the Irish demon in surprise; considering what had almost happened to him the previous night, she was impressed that he'd felt capable of even coming into work in the first place.
"Angel and Leo filled me in; sounds like we all had an interesting night last night," Doyle said, smiling briefly at his friend. "Anyway, how'd it go?"
"Good," Paige replied. "Difficult, but good. How about you and Harry?"
"We... talked," Doyle said, looking slightly awkwardly at her.
"Didn't go well, huh?" Paige said, looking sympathetically at him as she sat on the edge of the desk.
"'Bout as well as that thing can ever go," Doyle said grimly, staring in dejection at the desk in front of him.
"Hey," Paige said, reaching over to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder. "You'll get through this, Doyle. Nice guys don't always finish last, you know."
"I'll keep that in mind," Doyle said, before he raised a slightly curious eyebrow at Paige. "Talking of nice guys, how 'bout you and Angel?"
"Yeah, well, I've been thinking about that, and... I'm not quite ready to let that go yet," Paige said, grinning slightly as she spoke. "Maybe we're not always going to have it easy, but I think we've got enough going for us that there's no reason to give up on him just yet."
"Good," Doyle said, smiling at her in approval. "Always good to hear something worked out for people."
"What worked out for people?" Angel asked, walking out of his office to look curiously at Doyle and Paige.
"Just... we're all alive, you know," Paige clarified, smiling over at him. "Oh, and things with Sam aren't too bad, I promise you; he actually said that he likes you."
"Good," Angel said, a slightly embarrassed expression on his face that neither Paige or Doyle could recall seeing on him before now; somehow, the idea of the vampire looking embarrassed like this still managed to amuse them despite everything else that they had gone through the previous night. "Talking of people liking people, how's the search for a nanny coming along?"
"Apparently the elf Piper and Leo were speaking to yesterday spread the word about that Darklighter attack," Paige said, her expression becoming slightly grimmer as she remembered the close call that Sam had nearly suffered...
God, had that only been the previous night? She couldn't recall a day as busy as this since the time they'd had to deal with Alcathla and Agent Jackman virtually simultaneously...
"Hey," Angel said, smiling as he walked over to stand beside her, placing a gentle arm around her shoulders. "We'll work something out, huh? I mean, I'm sure Doyle or I can help to keep an eye on the kid when Piper's at the club or something like that..."
"Taking on uncle-esque duties already?" Paige said, surprised at how comfortable she felt naming Angel and Doyle as her prospective niece's uncles already.
"Uncle?" Doyle repeated, looking at Paige in surprise, clearly not having expected such a title.
"Hey," Paige said, smiling over at Doyle. "You're on the team, Doyle; you don't have to be dating one of us to be counted as family."
She might not have had the largest possible family while she was growing up, and her current one was far from conventional, but Paige felt that she'd experienced enough screwed-up families in her time in social work to know when she had a good one.
As far as she was concerned, her old relationship-related hang-ups could be forgotten now; she had a new relationship with her biological father, she'd had an interesting epiphany or two about her thoughts on relationships, and she'd learned some interesting trivia about Doyle's past life into the bargain.
Their lives might be complicated, but the bonds between them could never be broken; new information and events like what had happened recently could only make them stronger.