The shelter buzzed with noise as early morning light peeked in from the windows. Around the room, once comforting and quiet, people still rushed around and talked in hurried tones. The kids sleeping in the other rooms could not have had too peaceful a night, Angel thought. People were rushing back and forth from the kitchen and bathroom to help, but he had remained fixated on Faith's sleeping body since they came in.
He listened idly to Anne's commanding voice steering people around and Carrie explaining the night's events to Vincent. He briefly tore his attention away to look at Barbara to his right, who was hugging Isabel so close he feared for her breathing. After a seemingly torturous amount of time, Barbara let go with a deep breath. Her eyes met Angel's, and he immediately noticed how red they had become. With a weak smile, she walked over to him.
"Y'all did good," she muttered.
Angel looked back at the couch where Faith was lying. "We did what we had to."
Barbara nodded. "Izzy told me what happened back there. Do you think your lady friend will be okay?"
"She's tough," he replied.
Barbara was quiet for a bit. "I'm really glad you brought my girl home. I don't know what I would have done without her," she finally said.
"I might," he replied.
"Are you a parent?"
He froze, giving the ground a thoughtful look. "I… know what it feels like to be one," he decided on.
She saw his expression and seemed to drop the topic. "Now y'all won't be getting my daughter in more trouble now, will you?"
Angel's eyes sought out Isabel. She was sitting at a chair against the wall on the opposite end of the room, getting her hair gently stroked by Carrie. She looked to be half asleep already.
"It seems like trouble is gonna find her regardless of what we do," he said. "Best we can do is prepare her for it."
An amused noise escaped Barbara's closed mouth. "Now that's a familiar sentiment." From the way she pronounced it, you would not have guessed the word had any t's.
"Isabel has Carrie and she has you. I think she'll be okay. But we're gonna need to find the other slayers before these people do. We can't let anyone else get hurt because of this."
"I'm gonna focus on keeping my girl safe, but you fight the good fight now, vampire. They're counting on you."
She gave him a clap on the shoulder and walked away. It was a nicer interaction than having a shotgun stuck in his face, he'd give her that. A few meters away from where he was sitting, Gunn had joined Anne on the couch Faith wasn't occupying. Her eyes were baggy and red, and looked like they could close at any moment. She said something to Gunn, but he couldn't make it out. His eyes returned - like they had many times that night - to Faith. He followed her chest as it rose and fell with her breathing, and the world faded away.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
Alex lay against the cold stone wall, half asleep when a noise came. She opened her eyes with some difficulty. Through the pipes lining the wall, a blue light shone, quickly overtaking most of the wall's space.
A shape appeared in the blue, stumbling forward, and she quickly recognized it as Leon. He had seen better days. His shirt was stained with blood - some still looked fresh - and his breathing was haggard. He knelt down next to her.
Alex examined him, but her brain didn't seem to register what she was seeing. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine, Alexis. What happened to you?"
She smiled, shaking her head softly. "I did it. I really did it."
He coughed. It was a terrible sound, like a car engine sputtering its last breath. "You… did?" he forced out.
She nodded softly. "The spell. I think it worked."
His face turned from a pained expression to a stare as wide-eyed as his body could muster. "So young Isabel is-"
Alex shook her head. "No, not her. The other one. Faith."
"That's- that's incredible," Leon said. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here to help you."
She waved a tired arm at him. "Don't worry. I made it out okay." The coloration of her skin told a different story. "Besides, you got shot or something, right?"
Leon waved his hand in front of his wound, seemingly closing it bit by bit. "I'll manage. Where are the others?"
"Ben's getting something to help me. He's a sweetie. Don't know about the others."
The door opened, and the two turned their gazes towards it. Ben walked in, awkwardly shifting a plastic bag of ice cubes between his hands. His eyes widened when he looked towards them.
"Leon!" he exclaimed. "You're here. In this room. That's where you are."
Leon looked at him, unphased. "Are you alright Benjamin?" he asked.
"Am how I am. Worry about Alex, that spell really took something out of her. Well, and the fighting, that was pretty bad too." He was talking fast, as if caught by a parent with his hands in the cookie jar. He walked over to Alex and dropped the bag when he knelt beside her.
She exhaled amusedly. "Butterfingers."
"No, it's just really cold for my hands."
"You know, you could have put less ice in it and just held the plastic."
He paused, but didn't answer. With one motion, he pulled off his long sleeved shirt, then bound it around the ice bag. "Here, this should help with the headache."
"Thanks," she mumbled, then shuddered as the cold hit her forehead.
Behind them, the door opened again, and Nasima and David entered, both looking thoroughly beat. Leon rose to his feet to meet them.
Nasima looked surprised for second, then angry. "Oh good. Just the guy I wanted to talk to."
"What's wrong?" Leon asked with a skeptical glint.
"What's wrong? Oh I'll tell you what's wrong. You could wipe the floor with anyone we fight, but you never do. You could take out the slayers quietly and prevent so much harm, and yet you wanna get teacher's pet here to learn some big spell that's gonna fix 'em up good like that changes jack."
"Hey, it worked!" Alex exclaimed.
"I don't give a shit if it worked!" She pointed to Leon. "Because of the plan you made we lost a member to the cops, drew the attention of half of Los Angeles, got a vampire's vigilante squad on our tails, lost our hostage and now we can't stay at our headquarters anymore! All because you have some hangup about taking out demons if they wear a human face. I hope you're happy, Leon, cause I'm sick of this."
Alex forced herself upright and stared down Nasima. "Much as you don't like it, because it complicates your bullshit worldview, they're people, and last I checked, we don't generally kill those!"
Nasima scoffed. "But we kidnap them and put them through torture to 'fix' them? This is a bad hill for you to die on, Alex."
"Well we have to do something! And you'd rather kill them, what does that say about you?"
Ben had gotten close, ready to separate the two if need be. "I gotta say, I'm on team 'let's-not-murder-people' here," he said.
David glared at him. "I guess it figures. You haven't lost anyone to a demon."
Ben chuckled mockingly. "Are you listening to yourself? Are they out murdering people with satanic powers? Do they have horns?"
"Vampires don't either, but you don't have the same moral qualms about them, do you?" David retorted.
"Vampires don't have souls. They kill people to stay alive. Yeah, I'm pretty okay with them dying. Slayers are different."
Leon gave Nasima and David a glare that few ever saw from him. "Slayers are not our enemies. They are victims of a condition imposed on them. If this is how you feel, I will not help you."
Nasima crossed her arms and shrugged. "Fine. I don't see what worth there is sticking around here anyway." She glanced at Ben and Alex, then turned and headed towards the door. "Good luck finding a new base. And new members." And with that, she was gone.
"Dave-" Ben began.
David followed after Nasima and shut the door behind him. The three left in the room were quiet for a while.
Angel followed a car as it passed, the sound filling his ears, then slowly dying down. The city never slept, and he followed suit. He sighed and watched his breath enter the cold air and disperse. The door opened, the noise followed by a short sequence of footsteps.
"Long night, huh?"
Anne.
"I've had better," he said.
Anne leaned her back against the wall. "Honestly, I'm just glad to see her again. I would have never lived with myself if she had stayed gone."
"It wouldn't have been your fault," Angel said.
"You know that doesn't matter. You, of all people."
"I guess. You don't have to share in my mistakes, though." He yawned.
She turned to him. "You wanna borrow a couch in there? There are carpets, if you wanna sleep."
"I'll be heading back."
Her face darkened slightly. "Back to the company," she said.
"Back to the company," he repeated.
"I still don't understand why you work there."
He looked up into the sky, saying nothing for a while, then sighed. "I don't want to absolve myself at the cost of something worse."
"What could be worse!?" she exclaimed.
"The second I left, the company would be back to business as usual. Trust me, that's worse. I'm getting my hands dirty, but I'm doing something good with all of this. Better."
She scoffed. "If you could make real change with your power there, they wouldn't have given it to you."
He didn't have an answer for that.
Anne moved away from the wall and took a few steps towards the door. Pulling it open, she said, "Gunn said he's saying here for a bit. To help keep the girls safe."
Angel nodded.
She closed the door behind her.
Their footsteps echoed through the streets - a steady pace proceeding through the precarious LA night in two overlapping rhythms. Nasima let out a moan of frustration, the latest of many.
"He's just- I- GAH!" Her hands clenched into claws, gesturing wildly in front of her.
"Mhm," David muttered, paying her little mind.
From the shadows a few meters ahead, a snap rung out. They stopped. In the darkness, they saw a flame appear, soon after lighting the signature shape of a cigarette. An obscure figure raised it to its lips, then let the smoke flow out from its hiding spot.
"Feel cool with the tough guy act?" David asked, crossing his arms.
"Not a particularly warm night, is it?" the figure said.
"You-" David began.
Nasima cocked her head. "Noah?"
The figure stepped out, revealing a slender, pale form, topped off by a messy head of mousy brown hair and a face covered in uneven stubble. They could see now that the flame hadn't been from a lighter, but from his index finger. He shook his hand, extinguishing it.
"Did you miss me?" he asked, flashing a grin that half seemed like it had been carved into his face.
"What are you doing here?" Nasima asked.
Noah let out another puff of smoke, walking around the two. "What, you didn't think I'd just disappear, did you?"
"Kind of, yeah! You certainly sounded like it after-"
He shook his head, "We don't need to talk about the past right now. Why don't we focus on the future?"
"The future?" David asked.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Noah said. "I notice you two don't seem too happy."
"You have good timing," Nasima pointed out..
"No, I have eyes."
"You mean you were spying on us?" she exclaimed.
He waved a hand dismissively. "Spying's an ugly word. I… keep tabs."
She gnarled in complaint, then sighed through her nose. "Leon's made a mess of things."
Noah put a hand on his chest dramatically, feigning shock. "Did he now?" He was unable to suppress a chuckle.
"Well you're the one who left. We've at least been trying to make things work," David said.
"So hostile, Dave. I thought we were friends."
He let a frustrated sigh pass through his gritted teeth. "We are, we are, but you just left. Not even a goodbye. And here you are like nothing's changed."
"Oh, everything's changed," Noah said with a smile.
He lifted his hand slowly, then formed a fist. Around the three, light was pulled in unnatural shapes from their sources. One by one, streetlights and windows went black, and every ray of light made a curved path to Noah's hand, where they vanished. The street was completely dark.
He opened his hand again, and the light appeared once more, shining brilliantly from his palm. Nasima and Dave averted their eyes. Noah chuckled and waved his hand. In an instant, the rays of light returned to their sources, and the street returned to normal.
"What the hell was that?" Nasima exclaimed.
"A little trick I picked up," he replied.
Dave looked at a streetlight on the other side of the road, then back to Noah. "Where did you… learn that?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "I've learned a lot," he said. "I've been fighting against the scum of this city alone since I left. And I want you to join me."
Dave smiled. "Like old times, eh?"
"Like old times."
"I'm in," Dave said.
"Hold on," it came from Nasima. "What are we getting out of this?"
Noah frowned. "It's the good fight, isn't it?"
"Of course," she began, "but if you wanna lead this, we're gonna want something in return."
He eyed her. "Well, I know you've been having some trouble with a few slayers lately."
"What about it?" she asked.
"If it's revenge you want, I'm just the man you're looking for."
Dave could hear the gears turning in Nasima's head as she gave Noah a skeptical look.
"I can work with that," she finally said.
Dave gave her a friendly punch, then turned to Noah. "Sooo, do we have a plan?"
He took a few steps away from them. "We're gonna pull the evil of this city up by the root." He magically lifted a flower into his hand from a patch of grass by the road. "And then burn every last bit."
In an instant, the flower evaporated in flame. He took several quick, heavy breaths, letting the flame linger in his hand. The smoke rose in disorderly shapes into the empty air.
Angel leaned back in his seat as he stared out of the window, his thoughts still preoccupied with the shelter behind them. And her. Turning his eyes up, he saw the red-orange glow that had overtaken the eastern sky. The night had been burned away, and morning risen from its ashes. It was so strangely serene. He shuddered.
.
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I feel like I should clarify a decision I made. The keen-eyed among you may realize this is the second time a chapter 13 has been posted. That's because I recently did an edit, consisting of putting two of the shorter chapters, 3 and 4, now just 3, together, as well as moving the intro of chapter 3 to the top of chapter 1. It was very early in the story process, and my thought process about the plot changed a bit in those first chapters. The scene was meant as a sort of prologue, but always stuck out to me as being late for its narrative purpose, so I've moved it to where it honestly should have been all along.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter, until next time.
- Silphanis