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
Feedback: I'd like that, believe me
AN: OK, sorry for anyone who wanted to actually see Jackman snuff it, but really, apart from the fact that Paige wasn't with Piper and Phoebe when it happened, it worked out pretty much the same way it did in the show, and I really wanted to get on to the main part of this chapter- the Angelus-related parts, you know-, so I decided it wasn't worth the effort of rewriting that part
Sent to the Witch
As Angelus stood in front of the statue that was Alcathla, his eyes alternating between the sword that held Alcathla frozen before he could begin the great cleansing and the young man who had been dragged off the streets to serve as the sacrifice for this grand scheme, he couldn't stop himself from chuckling slightly as he thought of what was about to happen.
Soon, he thought to himself as he stepped forward, his gaze fixed on the man before him, this whole pathetic world will be gone…
He'd like to see how long Paige could keep up this little game of theirs when that happened.
She might have been able to hold her own against him so far, of course- the fact that she'd managed to figure out a way to stop him leaving those drawings of hers in particular still got on his nerves; he'd really enjoyed being able to do that again-, but in a world where demons ruled supreme, she would succumb to him eventually.
"I will drink," he said solemnly as he stopped in front of his soon-to-be victim. "The blood will wash in me, over me, and I will be cleansed. I will be worthy to free Acathla. Bear witness-" he glanced over at where Spike still sat in his wheelchair, staring silently at the sight before him, "-as I ascend-" looking over at Drusilla, he wasn't surprised to see her grinning like normal, "-as I become."
With that, he shifted into his game face, grabbed the victim by the hair and hauled the man to his feet, instantly plunging his teeth into the neck before him. Even as he drank the blood, however, he kept the final goal of the current exercise in mind, raising one hand to cover it with the blood before the man fell to the floor, now drained of his vital life-giving fluid.
"Everything that I am," Angelus said solemnly, as he walked towards the statue, "everything that I have done, has led me here. I have strayed, I have been lost. But Acathla redeems me. With this act, we will be free."
With that, he grasped the hilt of the sword before him with both hands, instantly generating a brilliantly bright light that could have almost rivalled the sun in its intensity.
For a moment, as Drusilla bathed in the light while his own body shook with the strain of the power being channelled through the sword to him, Angelus could almost feel the sword begin to separate from the demon it had kept entombed for so many centuries…
Then, before he even had time to realise that something wasn't right, a bright red 'flame' of some sort burst from the sword, sending him flying backwards onto the floor, the sword still firmly lodged inside the statue before the assorted vampires.
"Someone wasn't worthy…" Spike said, a mocking sing-song tone to his voice as he sat in his wheelchair and smirked over at his grandsire.
"Damn it!" Angelus growled as he scrambled to his feet, glaring at the statue before him as he wished he could just punch the damn thing for getting on his nerves this much.
"This is so… disappointing!" Drusilla moaned, slumping dejectedly against the wall.
"There must be something I missed," Angelus growled, pacing up and down before the statue. "The incantations, the blood... I don't know!"
He vaguely registered Spike chuckling off to one side, but pushed it out of his mind to focus on the more immediate matter at hand; as enjoyable as it might be to make fun of his crippled grandchilde, he had to focus on the matter at hand right now.
"What are we going to do?" Drusilla asked, whining slightly as she looked pleadingly over at Angelus.
It was as she looked at him that inspiration struck Angelus.
They didn't know how to wake Alcathla up… but maybe someone else did.
"What we always do in a time of trouble," he said, turning to answer Drusilla with a slight smirk on his face. "Turn to an old friend."
He might not know how to open Alcathla, but if those damn Elders hadn't at least told the Whitelighter how to pull it off- if only to make sure he knew what to stop Angelus from trying-, he'd be very surprised.
All he needed to do was get Leo away from the sisters, set up a few of those anti-orbing amulets that Spike still had lying around somewhere, and they'd have the key to waking Alcathla up available to them in one easy-to-torture, hard-to-permanently-kill-by-accident package.
Just when you thought life had dealt you a bad hand, it always seemed to find a way to make up for it…
As soon as Paige had reappeared inside Angel's old flat, her eyes instantly fell on the dark-haired woman now sitting on Angel's bed, dressed in a tight white top with long loose sleeves and dark trousers with shoulder-length dark hair.
"Paige Matthews, I assume?" she asked, standing up and walking towards Paige with one hand outstretched. "I'm Jenny Calendar; we spoke on the phone?"
"I guessed," Paige replied briefly, shaking the offered hand before she forced matters back to business; she knew that it might appear rude, but given that they were operating on a limited time frame in case Angelus figured out how to release Alcathla while they were occupied, she didn't have time for the social niceties. "So, simple question; can you tweak the curse the way I asked, or can't you?"
"You mean, omit the clause when we cast it this time?" Jenny replied, smiling slightly at the younger witch. "Theoretically, with your sisters and you contributing your power to the curse, it should be possible to omit the clause. My uncle wasn't exactly happy about it- as far as he's concerned, the only difference between Angelus and… Angel… is that Angel has a conscience-, but I convinced him that you had a point when you talked about how Angelus would still suffer when he was forced to watch Angel do good deeds while he couldn't do anything about them himself."
"Really?" Paige said, smiling gratefully at the other woman; after so long worrying that she'd never get to see Angel again, that was the first bit of truly good news she'd heard in a while. "You really think you can get the soul to stick?"
"Almost, anyway," Jenny replied, reaching into a bag lying on the ground beside the bed and pulling out a few sheets of paper. "After some effort, my clan and I managed to alter the curse to mostly remove the clause, but by its very nature we still need to include a loophole if it's going to work at all. Even with your magic enhancing our strength, all we can accomplish is making it a loophole that's harder to break; I think that what I've got will do the job…"
"What is it?" Paige asked simply; with Alcathla potentially still active, right now all that mattered to her was that they get to the point of the matter as swiftly as possible.
"Well… we can stop the clause from being triggered every time… Angel… becomes too happy, but he needs to consciously be thinking about the curse when that happens," Jenny explained, looking slightly apologetically at Paige. "It's the best we can do, really; there are rumours of demonic shamen who might be able to do something more permanent than this, but all the stories about them make it clear that they will only cast the spell after the one seeking the soul has committed an act of sacrifice or passed various tests to prove that his desire is strong enough to cope with the burden he'll receive, and since Angelus would never willing seek a soul…"
"There's no point in even trying to get those guys to do it 'cause Angelus wouldn't even bother passing the tests; gotcha," Paige said, nodding briefly at the gypsy (She still couldn't believe gypsies actually still existed these days; even if she acknowledged that they'd probably moved beyond her mental image of caravans and horses, it still just didn't feel right) in understanding. "You got everything you need for the spell, right?"
"The translated and modified spell, the herbs, the candles, and even the Orb of Thesulah; all here," Jenny confirmed, nodding at Paige as she patted her bag.
"The Orb of what?" Paige repeated, looking at the gypsy in confusion.
"A crystal orb that essentially serves to hold the soul during the transit between the afterlife and the return to the body; it's a spirit vault for rituals involving the undead," Jenny replied. "My clan and I have it all planned out; the spell had to be altered slightly to accommodate your power level, but otherwise it should work fine. Essentially, we position the orb in the centre of the sacred circle, light the candles, and then, having sprinkled the herbs, you recite the required spell; given your own natural power level, I've managed to trim the curse slightly to make it more compatible with your brand of magic while retaining the fundamental intent, but in the end the only way we're going to know if it worked or not is if we actually cast it."
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating, huh?" Paige said, smiling slightly at the gypsy. "Well, guess we'll just have to do what we can and hope for the best, huh?"
"Quite," Jenny said, smiling gratefully back at the younger woman. "Thanks for… well, for trusting us; after what we did to your… well…"
"You gave me Angel; how could I not be grateful for that?" Paige said, smiling reassuringly at the woman. "As I already told you, Angelus isn't Angel; he's just what Angel becomes when everything that makes him Angel gets taken out of his body. You guys did nothing to Angel except make him what he was before he lost his soul; all I'm asking is that you help me put that demon asshole back in his box and let Angel take his place."
"And… you're comfortable with us using this curse?" Jenny asked, looking pointedly at Paige. "These magics haven't exactly been used by my people that often… We only even used this curse once in recorded history; there's a possibility that it might not even do anything after the changes I've made…"
"You guys wrote this curse in the first place; even if things have changed a bit for you all since then, I'm prepared to trust that you know what you're doing when you're trying to rewrite it," Paige replied, looking reassuringly at the other woman. "Just talk me through what you've got and we'll make sure you've got everything you might need for it, OK? All I'm asking is that you try; if you succeed, you'll have given a good man his life back."
She didn't bother adding that Jenny would also have given her her boyfriend back; while having Angel back with her would be brilliant, the main reason she was doing this (She kept telling herself) was so that a good man would have a chance to continue fighting for his redemption.
"All right," Jenny said after a moment's pause, nodding resolutely at the younger witch. "I'll get everything out while we wait for your sisters; how long will they be, by the way?"
"Give it-" Paige began, before she was interrupted mid-sentence by the ringing of her mobile phone.
"Huh?" she said, reaching into her pocket to pull out the phone in question, glancing briefly at the called ID- it said 'Piper', but with a deranged FBI agent on her tail when she'd last checked she wasn't about to take something like that at face value- before she raised the phone to her ear and pressed the 'Accept Call' button.
"Hey, Paige," the voice of her oldest living sister said on the other end of the line, which at least answered Paige's uncertainty about whether her sisters were all right or Jackman had stolen their phones to try and find her. "How's things going over there?"
"Piper?" Paige said in surprise; she hadn't expected her sisters to deal with their particular problems this quickly. "What about Serena? And Agent Jackman?"
"Safe and dead, in that order," Piper replied. "We got Serena out safely enough- those anti-magic amulets of Jackman's were a bit of a pain, but nothing we couldn't handle-, but… well, Cole kinda astral projected his way out of the Wasteland and… seriously, don't ask me how he did it, but he made Phoebe and Jackman switch places just after Jackman tried to shoot her-"
"And, lemme guess, the bullet hit him instead of Phoebe, right?" Paige concluded, feeling a momentary satisfaction at the news that Jackman was dead- he might be human, but that didn't mean he was any kind of 'innocent' after what he'd tried to do to her and her family- before her mind latched onto the more immediate fact of Piper's statement. "Wait a minute, Cole's back?"
"No, thankfully; from what we saw it looks like he just astral projected out of that 'Wasteland' place Phoebe told us about long enough to do the old switcheroo thing and then vanished back there afterwards," Piper replied. "Given that he didn't stick around after saving Phoebe, I think it's safe enough to say that Cole's still out of our hair except on at least a short-term basis- we can work on figuring out a more permanent solution later- , which at least gives us a bit of time to see about the Angelus issue; how's that working out, by the way?"
"Well, Jenny and I have been talking, and she thinks we can do the curse properly," she said, exchanging one last confirming glance with the gypsy in question before she turned back to the conversation with her sister. "You guys just need to get over here, we'll set everything up, and then…"
She shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant even as a hopeful smile crossed her face; she wasn't going to think about the possibility that it wouldn't work and run the risk of creating a negative atmosphere. "Angel's back, the Vampire Society for Releasing Alcathla loses its president, and the world lives on while we… do what we want."
As much as she might prefer to keep her magic, she wasn't going to push her luck; her sisters were evidently willing to at least help her by trying to cast this curse, and she'd just have to take everything else as it came.
"OK," Piper said finally. "We'll get Leo and see about clearing away any witch-related evidence on us over here- Darryl also wants us to fill in an official board regarding what actually happened here-, and then we'll join you and Jenny as soon as we can; see you soon."
"Check," Paige replied, nodding briefly before she remembered that Piper wouldn't be able to see it. "See you soon."
With that said, she terminated the call and looked back at Jenny. "OK, they'll be here in a few minutes; let's get started, shall we?"
A couple of hours later, as Paige and Jenny went over the requirements for the curse one last time- Paige couldn't believe how much more complicated things were for Jenny's branch of magic; even with the Power of Three added to the equation it needed a hell of a lot more herbs than any spell she'd done with Piper and Phoebe just to make sure the magic that they were calling upon was focused on its intended goal-, the faint sound that Paige had come to associate with orbing reached her ears, prompting her to turn around and smile as Leo, Piper and Phoebe appeared in front of her.
"Good to see you, guys," she said, smiling over at her sisters before she assumed a more anxious expression. "Uh… what's been done about the Jackman thing?"
"Well," Piper said, smiling reassuringly at her youngest sister, "thanks to Selena's testimony, we've managed to get ourselves cleared of any charges Jackman might have whipped up for us, even if they are confused about how Jackman can have shot himself from twenty feet away."
"What are they going to do about it, subpoena Cole?" Phoebe said, shaking her head dismissively at the idea.
"Darryl and I are pretty sure that the FBI won't be too concerned about looking further into the matter, given that you stopped one of their own from killing again," Leo put in, before he smiled slightly. "And as for Jackman's files… well, I kind of orbed them into a volcano."
"A volcano?" Jenny repeated, looking in surprise at the Whitelighter. "Isn't that a bit… well, overkill?"
Looking almost sheepishly in the direction of the gypsy, as though he and the other two had only just remembered that she was there, Leo shook his head.
"Uh… not really," he said. "All I did was protect my charges, which is totally within my remit as a Whitelighter; so long as I don't expose the existence of magic, I haven't actually disobeyed any rules."
"And once again, thanks for that," Piper said, leaning in to kiss Leo briefly before she turned back to Jenny. "So, you think you can stick Angel's soul back in his body?"
"Well, as I already explained to Paige, even with your power this kind of spell requires a loophole of some kind," Jenny said, looking slightly apologetically at the two newly-arrived sisters. "We can change the original curse so that Angel won't lose his soul every time he gets happy enough, but he needs to be consciously thinking about the clause when he… y'know…"
"Is in a position to lose it, right?" Piper asked, nodding quickly in understanding. "OK, gotcha; let's just… not go any further on that front, OK; I'd really rather not have to think about my baby sister doing… that."
"Well, if you want to talk about less personal disturbing matters, any news from the Elders on the Alcathla front yet?" Paige asked, looking inquiringly over at Leo. She wanted to ask about the Angel of Destiny situation, of course, but with Alcathla still an issue she felt sure that her sisters would have mentioned the Angel if they felt they had to; given the scale of the current crisis, she was guessing that the guy had probably been told to give them some time out until they'd dealt with the current situation and saved Angel. "I mean, is the guy active or is he still dozing away?"
"No, he's still stone; the Elders remain confident that Angelus hasn't figured out how to wake him up," Leo replied. "If we move fast enough I'm hopeful that we can still re-curse Angelus before he can work out the ritual; he's still not worked out what it means when it says that Alcathla can only be woken by one who's 'worthy'-"
"Just out of curiosity, what does that mean?" Piper asking, looking curiously at Leo. "I mean, what would a demon like Alcathla actually define as 'worthy'?"
"I can't say; the more people know the more likely Angelus might find out himself," Leo said apologetically, before he looked over at Paige. "The point is, Angelus still hasn't learned what he needs; if we move fast enough, we can still get Angel back before he has the chance to complete the ritual-"
"And what if we can't do that?" Phoebe countered, looking critically between Leo and Paige. "What if Angelus has reached the same point that Cole reached? You know, the one where there's no other option but to kill him?"
Turning to look at her older sister, Paige stared pointedly at Phoebe for a few moments before she spoke.
"If that's happened," she said, looking resolutely at the seer, "I'll be the one to decide; I know what Angelus is capable of better than anyone, and I'm the only one who'll be able to know for sure that he's reached the point where leaving him alive is the riskier option than just killing him."
"And how can we be sure you'll even be able to make that kind of call?" Phoebe countered. "I had enough trouble just vanquishing Cole-"
"Angelus isn't Angel; Cole didn't look like he'd changed that much apart from the powers thing-" Paige interjected.
"Moving on," Piper cut in; she had no desire to see her sisters get into this kind of argument when something like Alcathla was threatening the world, "is there any way we can know where Angelus is?"
"Not immediately, but the Elders say that he's stopped trying to unleash Alcathla for the moment; there was a brief spurt of dimensional disruption when he apparently tried to free Alcathla earlier, but it didn't work," Leo said, shrugging slightly as he looked at the sisters. "On the topic of stopping Alcathla, they told me to give Paige something."
Holding out his hand and looking upwards, the former WW2 medic simply stood in that pose as though he was waiting for something for a few moments, before a large, elaborate-looking sword appeared in his hands, equipped with a scabbard that appeared to be designed to be worn on the wielder's back, which he subsequently handed over to Paige.
"It was blessed by the knight that first managed to kill Alcathla," he said, as Paige removed the sword from the scabbard, studying the blade reflectively even as she slung the scabbard over her back. "If all else fails and Angelus manages to remove the sword that's currently there, the Elders say that this should stop Alcathla before he can unleash the vortex."
He paused uncertainly. "Well… they think it will, anyway."
"Really?" Paige said, only partly paying attention as she took the sword from her brother-in-law- she'd gathered that it could maybe be used to stop Alcathla in a worst-case-scenario, but the uncertainty about that factor just made it all the more imperative for her that they didn't get to the point where they'd have a worst-case-scenario- and gave it a couple of brief swipes through the air before she nodded in admiration. "Nice…"
"Uh… no offence, but is waving that thing around like that really the smart thing to do?" Phoebe asked, looking slightly sceptically at the sword. "I mean, I get that you've had some hand-to-hand training from the vamp-guy's better side, Paige, but I'm not exactly keen on you just… waving that thing around like that; did Angel really have the time to cover sword-fighting during those lessons of yours…?"
"The Elders have already covered that," Leo added, indicating the sword with a slight smile. "It's been enchanted with a spell that, when wielded by anyone good, will grant them an instinctive knowledge of sword combat. It isn't total, of course- the spell needs to build on the wielder's pre-existing combat knowledge to work, and the user's abilities will still be fundamentally amateur rather than the automatic motion that they'd be if Paige had learnt the knowledge from training-, but it should be enough to put her on at least a somewhat more even footing in a fight between her and Angelus."
"Again, nice," Paige said, putting the sword down on a nearby table before she looked around at the others. "OK, here's the plan. I'm going to see if I can track down Angelus and keep him occupied while you guys work on that curse; personally speaking, I'd rather not find out what happens if we cast the curse while he's casting the ritual-"
"Hold on; can we get back to the bit where you're going to 'keep him occupied'?" Piper repeated, looking uncertainly at her sister. "Is that really smart? I mean, sword with mystical fighting knowledge as part of the package aside, we are talking about you going one-on-one with the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire with a serious mad-on for hurting you…"
"Exactly; even if I do find him with others, he's going to want to fight me himself," Paige clarified as she looked at her sister. "Besides, you guys need to stay here and work on the curse; if you get the chance to try it, you need to do it as soon as possible."
No sooner had she finished than a thought occurred to her and she looked anxiously over at Jenny. "Uh… do you need all of us?"
"Well, all three would be good, but I should be able to manage to re-cast the curse with just two of you," Jenny confirmed, nodding thoughtfully as she looked between the three sisters before her gaze settled on Paige. "If you can get back in time, I'd appreciate it, but if you can't…"
She shrugged. "Well, I think we can at least try it, if nothing else."
"Good enough for me," Paige said, as she picked up the sword and slung it onto her back, shrugging a long coat on over it- she didn't exactly want to attract attention by going around with a large sword on her back- before she turned to Phoebe. "You got a map I can use to scry for the guy?"
