Chapter Twenty-Six: Trouble Sleeping
One Month Later...
If there was one thing Angel knew that he wasn't, it was a storyteller.
Okay, so there were many things he knew that he couldn't do – just about anything and everything that had to do with performance... bar starring as a circus freak, but even that would come with limitations given his status as a strict night owl, but telling his little girl stories about himself shouldn't, he felt, be as difficult for him as it was. After all, not only could he draw upon more than two hundred years of various experiences, but he had also been an avid reader for a healthy portion of those many years. Yes, editing was of course required, but he was shocked to discover just how much of his more recent life was tainted beyond cleansing and how much of it he simply couldn't share, not even with his daughter.
To make matters worse, Angel also refused to lie to her. If he didn't have such reservations, telling his only child stories about himself would have been much easier. His many forays into danger could have become swash-buckling tales of adventure and mayhem, all of course concluding with a happy ending. If he didn't have such reservations, he'd be able to paint himself as a hero in his daughter's sightless eyes. Given the fact that they would only have such a short time together, a part of him did want Ash to think the best possible things about her father, but the more realistic aspect of his personality knew that such knowledge would be fraudulent, and, if he allowed his daughter to die believing him to be something that he wasn't, then she'd go to her grave without actually ever knowing him.
Now, that didn't mean that he shared tales of Angelus with her before she went to bed at night. Even putting aside his own qualms about dredging up such painful and bloody recollections, his little girl had far too much on her own plate already to fight; he didn't need to burden her further with his demons as well. Although the disintegration of her hearing had not progressed further, her motor skills were failing. So far, Ashlinn had been left paralyzed from the waist down, and they feared the paralysis would spread until the point where it killed her.
"Have you ever ridden in a convertible at night with the top down?"
Satisfied with his question, with the vein of conversation he was introducing between himself and his daughter, Angel smiled slightly until he heard his little girl's response. It wasn't the fact that she had never experienced the simple pleasure but the fact that, with the loss of the majority of her hearing, her speaking skills had also declined. With less of an ability to hear her own voice, Ash now spoke in a monotone, her words expressed in a halting, non-rhythmic manner. His tiny moment of if not happiness than peace disappeared even more quickly than it had occurred in the first place.
"What's a comfortable?"
He almost laughed at his daughter's pronunciation mistake, thinking that perhaps, among other things, she had inherited her mother's ability to take an unknown word and seamlessly change it into something recognizable. But then the reality of their situation crashed down upon him once more. Not only was Ash only four years old, but he also had to lean over and speak practically directing into her ear in order for her to hear him. The chances were that she had merely misunderstood him rather than displayed one of her mother's more endearing quirks.
So, answering stoically, he said, "a convertible is a car with a removable roof." Knowing by her question that she had never ridden in one, Angel launched into his story. "When I lived here in Sunnydale, I didn't have a car. In fact, I didn't really need one. I just walked everywhere. But L.A. – Los Angeles – is much bigger, so, when I moved there, I needed a better way to move around the city.
"I tried buses first, but..."
Ash's giggling made him pause, and, for the second time that evening, Angel felt himself reluctantly grinning. Despite his knowledge of his daughter's grace and courage in the face of her own mortality and constant pain, it always amazed him to witness just how happy Ashlinn really was. Although he knew such strength of character was not a trait she received from him, he was more grateful for it than words or even his own thoughts could express.
"Mama said that buses smell like old baloney sandwiches and Uncle Xander's bathroom."
"Well, I don't eat baloney, and I wouldn't go into your Uncle Xander's bathroom if you paid me, but I suspect that your mother is right." As he blissfully wallowed in his little girl's continued amusement, Angel waited several seconds before returning to his tale. "After the buses, I tried taking cabs, but... let's just say that cabs weren't reliable enough."
To say the least. With his working hours, it had been difficult to always procure a cab, and, even when he did, most drivers would protest against the types of places he needed to go to, and they refused to wait for him to take care of business and then return. Given the size of L.A., cabs also quickly became too expensive.
"So, it became either stay close to home... which isn't the easiest thing to do in Los Angeles... or buy a car. I bought a car."
"A convertible," Ash added helpfully. He had the suspicion that she just wanted to say the word. Though he didn't know anything about children, really, and had missed most of his daughter's life, Angel already knew that, when introduced to a new word, kids enjoyed saying it as much as they possibly could... or, at least, his little girl did.
"Yes, I did, but it wasn't an instant decision; it took me a while to figure out what I wanted."
"I'm like that with ice cream," Ashlinn told him sympathetically. "There are too many good kinds to just pick one."
Neither of them mentioned that she no longer had to worry about making such a difficult decision.
"That's how it was for me when it came to buying a car," Angel confided. "Did I want a black one or a gray one? A car or a SUV? Maybe a truck? If I bought a car, did I want two doors or four? Cloth or leather interior? A sleek, new model, or an old classic?"
"How did you pick?"
"I actually don't think that I did," he confessed, making his words sound just that much more astonished and interesting than they really were. "I think my car picked me."
"Daddy, cars can't do that!"
"I don't know," he argued with her playfully. "When I saw my car for the first time – it's a Plymouth Belvedere GTX Convertible, I knew that I shouldn't buy it. It would be expensive to fix when it broke down, and it would use a lot of gas, but I wanted it anyway, and I think it wanted me, too. Even when I had my back towards it, I'd still see it – sitting there, shining in the moonlight, just waiting for me to take it for a drive. I went back and bought it the very next night and then drove it until the sun came up, too."
Briefly, Angel wondered if his daughter ever noticed that all his stories took place after the sunset, but then he remembered who her mother was and, more importantly, what her mother did, and he dismissed his worries. Innocent or not, Ashlinn was the daughter of a vampire and a vampire slayer. Simply by relation, she, too, was a creature of the night. If nothing else proved that, her sleeping schedule certainly did. Left to her own devices, allowed to rest whenever she wanted to while in the hospital, Ash mainly slept during the very early hours of the morning and napped during the height of the sun's reign in the sky.
"It was the most... freeing feeling. Because it was dark out, I didn't actually see the things that I was driving past. They were just shapes, shadows in the night, the lights shining in their windows or the moon and stars' illumination reflecting off their empty glass and sleek metal forms. The sounds of the city faded, too, became blurred and unfocused beneath the steady, constant purr of car's engine, and the fresh breeze with the top down wiped clean the otherwise cloying and choking scents of a busy, traffic filled Los Angeles."
"Did Mama ever ride in your convertible with you," his daughter wanted to know.
Despite his best intentions, Angel almost resented the question. When he told Ash stories, it was meant to be a way for them to bond and for his little girl to get to know him better, but, no matter what they were talking about, she always managed to include Buffy. While he realized such behavior was simply a natural reaction for any child – wanting to be close to both of her parents at the same time, he was also jealous. Buffy had been a part of their child's life since the very second she was conceived; he had been given, so far, less than three months with his daughter.
However, he never allowed his bitterness to shine through, and he simply answered, "no, Ashlinn. She never did."
"You should take her for a ride," she insisted, apparently not ready to drop the subject yet. "I think Mama would like your convertible, too."
Noncommittally, he responded, "we'll see," brushing the suggestion aside, hoping Ash would allow them to move on and discuss something else, preferably something Buffy free.
"Tell me another story," his daughter requested, but, before he could even think of one, she continued, "a story about you and Mama."
Silently sighing, Angel roughly rubbed a hand against his tired face. It was almost dawn, the sun would be up soon, and that meant that Buffy would return, and he would once more leave for the day. However, the slayer wasn't there yet, and his little girl wasn't showing signs of falling asleep anytime soon, despite her usual sleeping habits. Quickly, desperately, he flipped through the memories of his three years in Sunnydale, searching for a story about his relationship with Buffy that would be appropriate for their four year old child to hear. "Well, did you know that your mom's afraid of really big bugs?"
"Mama's not afraid of anything."
The little girl's naïve statement gave him pause, for he was perhaps the only being in the world to know just how scared Buffy could sometimes be. He knew that she feared for her friends' lives and that, by loving her, they would be put in danger that she wouldn't be able to save them from. He knew that she feared her own death, whether by actually ceasing to exist or by losing herself to the rigors and demands of her calling. He knew that, at one point, she had feared a life without him, without her mother, and, now, she was faced with the unbelievably frightening aspect of life without their daughter. The realization of just how afraid Buffy probably was made another slight splinter of his anger towards her disintegrate and float away.
Pushing aside his thoughts, though, Angel refocused upon his daughter. "Did she tell you that – that she isn't afraid of anything, because, if she did, your mother's playing a trick on you. Trust me, she definitely hates bugs." Unbidden, a warm, genuine, lasting smile spread itself across his face.
He was lingering in that hazy, dense space of time that existed between sleep and consciousness, waiting for the final rays of the sun to say goodnight for yet another evening. Once dusk had officially fallen, he would rise, eat, and dress, all in preparation for Buffy's eventual arrival. While their relationship was still uneasy given the restraint they had to show when together, whether alone or not, they still spent most of their nights together – talking, patrolling, sometimes simply doing nothing but doing it with each other.
Before his body could completely leave behind the stupor of slumber, though, a piercing, desperate scream ripped through the mansion, waking him instantaneously, and, without thought, he reacted, running from his bed to where the sound originated from. Skidding to a halt, he was confronted with the sight of Buffy hopping from foot to foot in the courtyard garden, her fear preventing her from reacting rationally and simply fleeing into the house.
With laughter salting his words, Angel teased, "they're just cockroaches, Buffy. Granted, they're not the most attractive creatures, but you've seen worse. They won't harm you."
"They're bugs," she screeched, dashing off and hiding behind his bare back. Because he had just been asleep, he had nothing on put a pair of silk pajama pants. "Ergo, they're gross."
"Most bugs are, Buffy... which you should know. You've had to kill enough of Xander's potential girlfriends over the years." True, the teen had only been pursued by one demon bug, but Angel still enjoyed recalling the event whenever he possibly could. "Tell me a kind that you don't actually mind."
"A Volkswagen Bug," she said seriously, still cowering behind him.
He chuckled softly and went to respond to her comment, but, before he could, one of the cockroaches started scurrying closer towards him, and Buffy, still alarmed, jumped up to wrap herself around his back – her legs crossed about his waist, her arms clenched tightly about his neck. Acting as though he was put upon, Angel sighed, turned around, and went into his bedroom, slipping on a pair of shoes before returning to the garden.
Continuing with his ruse, he asked, "do you want to get down now, so I can kill them for you?" He had no intention of letting her go, though, and every intention of killing the cockroaches for her... eventually.
However, Buffy simply tightened her embrace. "I read an article once about a woman whose tongue started to swell for no reason. When the swelling didn't go down, she went to her doctor, but he couldn't figure it out either. Eventually, they cut her tongue open, and do you know what crawled out of it? A filthy, disgusting, a cut-out-my-tongue-even-if-I-never-taste-ice-cream-again-worthy cockroach. Apparently, there were roach eggs on an envelope that she licked that nicked her tongue. So, no, I will not get down."
"We're probably not going to be licking envelopes tonight, though, so I think you're safe."
"Yeah, but what if I get down, and one gets on my clothes... or one of their eggs do? You know we're going patrolling tonight, and you know how often I get cuts and scrapes. That egg could fall into an open wound, and, in a few weeks, I could have cockroaches bursting out of my skin. Nope. No way. I am not getting down. You can either carry me home like this or kill them some other way."
"You're not going anywhere," he promised her, refusing to sacrifice his alone time with his girlfriend in order to continue his teasing ruse. Without another word, he stepped forward and then stepped upon the three cockroaches visibly stirring before them on the flagstones of the courtyard. Between the cool, damp conditions of the mansion and the fountain, he was surprised it had taken so long for Buffy to see such bugs. Once the pests were all dead, he asked, "now what?"
"I'm still not getting down. If you have one cockroach, you have a thousand."
"That might be a slight exaggeration," he laughed, already turning towards his kitchen. With Buffy pressed up against his bare skin, getting dressed could wait until after he ate. "But I'll call an exterminator," he promised her. He just didn't say
how soon he'd place such a call.
Although they couldn't do much more than hold each other and occasionally kiss, if the sight of a bug or two provided them with an excuse to be so close, he'd take advantage of pests for as long as he possibly could. Plus, it felt good to have Buffy physically need him. Oh, he knew that she depended upon him for his love and support, for his emotional and mental presence in her life, but she was more than capable of taking care of and protecting herself. In fact, she often had to take care of and protect him. So, if her fear of some cockroaches made him her protector, he'd take advantage of that, too.
"What your father is forgetting to mention, Ash, is what cockroaches look like." He had been so lost in the story that he had failed to hear Buffy enter the hospital room behind him. Or, maybe, he admitted to himself, she had been so loathed to interrupt a pleasant moment between them, even if it had only been in his memories, that she had moved as quietly as she possibly could. Being the slayer, that was quite silently. "They're big and brown, and they dart around on these tiny, little legs so quickly that they can almost move without you seeing them do so. Plus, they're known for being gross bugs – dirty ones that only like to live in wet, equally dirty places."
"Not that my house was dirty," Angel spoke up, for some reason feeling the need to defend himself. He definitely didn't want his daughter to think that he was a pig... even if he did consume the creatures' blood, another thing he didn't want Ash to know about. "It was just..."
"... like an old castle," his little girl finished for him. "Mama showed me it."
That made him fall silent once more.
"You could stay, you know," Buffy said, catching him off guard for the second time in as many minutes. "Even though I'm here now, you don't have to leave."
"Yeah, Daddy, stay," Ashlinn begged him, her dull monotone voice sounding more animated than he had heard it in weeks. "Tell me more stories about you and Mama."
"Alright," he agreed somewhat reluctantly but also eagerly at the same time. "I'll stay."
Meeting Buffy's gaze, he wordlessly told her what his decision meant – that things weren't fixed or forgiven between them, but he wanted to spend as much time with their daughter as he possibly could, that he appreciated her offer to allow him to share her time with Ash, and that he would do anything within his power to make their little girl happy... even at the cost of his own comfort and pride. It wasn't a perfect, fuzzy family moment, and there certainly wasn't a sudden bridge built between them, but Angel wondered if perhaps the bridge's first piling had been put in position that morning, and, if so, he was thankful towards Buffy for taking that first step. It was a start.