Part Four

The team were gearing up ready to go, 'Wes,' Angel barked, pulling on his duster, 'have a tranq gun ready - as soon as you're clear, I need you to take the shot. Fred - we're gonna need medical on stand by. Make sure they're prepped. We got those files on her kidnapper?' Gunn handed them across, 'thanks, we need to be careful and we need to be smart. This girl is a step beyond any demon we've come up against in the past. But she's also an innocent victim. We gotta walk a fine line and stay safe. We go in there - I take her out - everyone else, stay back until Wesley has tranqued her.'

Cordelia tugged on his arm and pulled him to the side. 'Angel, I really think you need to reconsider this strategy,' she hissed. He looked perplexed, 'why?'

'Because! She's a deranged vampire slayer and you happen to wear the face of the worst vampire in recorded history to ever walk the earth. She's already taken out Spike - she'll go postal when she sees you.'

'But she knows Spike - from her slayer dreams. From the Boxer Rebellion and the New York Subway. I've never killed a slayer - she won't know me.'

'Uhuh,' she bit her lip and looked doubtful, 'never killed a slayer, sure. But ... that time you boinked Buffy and turned evil ringing any bells? Are you really so confident it won't ring any bells for Dana?'

'Oh … I hadn't thought about…'

'And what about last year, huh? When you were evil and you bit Faith - nearly killed her. You think that hasn't made it into psycho girl's nightmares?'

'Well - uh - I mean … maybe … but,' he shifted awkwardly, transferring his weight from one foot to the other. 'Cordelia - this girl is strong. Vampire slayer strong. And seriously damaged to boot. If I don't face her … who else is there that can do it?'

Cordelia took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. She hadn't told him this yet - she wasn't sure why - it was just a secret her and Doyle had kept without even really discussing it. Her destiny was their private business, now the rest of the team had left them behind. But now was the time to come clean, to tell Angel the truth about her powers. Too much was on the line to just not mention them. 'Me,' she said, heavily.


Spike stared through the drug induced fog, blinking at his mutilated wrists. 'Oh God,' he gasped, softly - though it was still a slurred mumble. 'Can't feel my…'

'No!' Dana smacked him across the face, his head turned with the force of the blow. Her voice was angry and frightened at the same time, trembling with rage and sorrow. 'No more daddy, no more mommy … no more hands.' Tears welled up in her dark eyes. 'Can't touch me ever again.'

Spike shook his head, slowly, still feeling the fuzzy, numbing effects of the drugs - his head was still heavy, felt like it might just roll off his shoulders. 'I never touched you…' It took all his concentration to think to the end of the sentence - to get his word out in the right order.

She punched him again. Again his head whipped round under the pressure of her fists. 'Stop - got it all wrong,' he tried to tell her. He willed himself to battle against the somnolent drugs still buzzing their way through his system, to swim his way through the black haze that threatened to suck him back down into unconsciousness - where she would do god knows what to him - and focused on her face; staring intently into her tortured, glaring eyes. 'Your brain's all jumbled. I never hurt you. It wasn't me.'

He shook his head, regretfully - as even in this dazed, drug induced smog he remembered all the bad things he had done. All the little girls he had hurt. He couldn't say he didn't deserve this - that this was not just, that so many lost souls over the past hundred years should have had a chance to tie him down and do exactly this - but hurting him would not help Dana. He wasn't the monster that had hurt her - he wasn't the monster that she needed to fight in order to make things right, to make peace. 'I've done my share of bad,' he admitted - and he knew she knew that; that there was no point denying it. He was already in her head, from what he'd done to Nikki - and to that Chinese slayer. That's why she was confused, she couldn't parse out her slayer nightmares from her past. Spike's face leered at her from her dreams - and that had got jumbled with the memories of her own personal horror story. But she needed to separate them, for her own sake, if not his. 'But you're not one of them,' he told her, shaking his head and gazing into her eyes, pleading with her to see the truth. 'It's someone else.'

Dana stared down at him. She remembered he carried little Dana across the room, she remembered what it was like to be held in his arms - unable to escape, not knowing what he would do to her next. She remembered looking into his face - the bad man - his blonde hair, his high cheekbones, his eyes leering at her … she closed her eyes and saw the bad man again, but this time he was dark haired, older looking, heavier set. Not this man. Someone else…

He chained her to the pipes - she saw him. Spike. William the Bloody. No - Spike was a vampire. He was a monster from her nightmares, he fought the other girls - the ones Dana was connected to, the chosen. The monster from her memories was different; human. She saw him in her mind's eye, this dark haired human man who had taken her mommy and daddy, stolen her from her home, chained her up and hurt her - for months. Not this monster. A different monster.

Spike watched her face, carefully. Even trapped under this cotton wool mist he could see the tremors pass across her features, the emotions as she remembered the truth - her own truth, and the experiences of the slayers - dividing them in her mind. 'You've got me mixed up with another man,' he said, softly. 'Visions… are mixing … with your other memories. All right? Got 'em stuffed in your head. Other slayers. Other places. New York … China.'

She spoke a few words of Chinese again, the same words from earlier. 'Tell my mother, I'm sorry.'

Spike nodded. 'Yeah. That's what you're remembering. Other slayers.'

'You killed her,' her voice was suddenly lucid - and very cold.

'Yes, but…'

'You killed them both.'

'That and worse.' His voice was barely more than a whisper. He shook his head again. 'But I was never here.'

She balled her fist and punched him in the face, over and over again. 'Doesn't matter. Head and heart. Keep cutting until you see dust.' She grabbed her bone saw and wielded it above Spike - but then she was suddenly pulled back and thrown across the room.

...

Spike slumped in relief - not knowing or caring who had saved him. He let his head fall to his chest - it was so heavy and it had taken so much out of him just to lift it up and keep talking. He became dimly aware of Angel by his side - and the whole team - and a guy he didn't recognise, crowded into the basement. He was too … tired… too heavy to worry about who that short guy in the cheap shirt was, or who it was that was fighting Dana. He was just happy to be able to fall back into semi consciousness - now he knew Angel was here. Now he knew he would be safe.

...

Meanwhile, Cordelia had thrown Dana across the room and raised her fists ready for the other slayer to come back at her. Dana righted herself - and stared at the woman. She knew her - they'd fought before. This woman was strong. Strong like Dana. 'You're one of them,' she said, peering at Cordy from beneath her hair. 'One of the girls.' She raised her fists ready to fight, but didn't make a move.

'I'm a slayer, Dana, just like you,' Cordelia said softly, dropping her own fists when she realised that she was not about to be charged. 'And I'm not here to hurt you - I'm here to help you. If you let me.'

'Can't hurt me anymore. Strong.'

'I don't want to try. But I know who did hurt you, Dana - a long time ago. A bad man brought you here, didn't he? Kept you here. You were frightened.'

'Made me weak. Not weak anymore. Slayer.'

'That's right,' She took some tentative steps towards the other woman. 'You and me - and a whole bunch of other girls just like us. We're strong now. Bad people can't hurt us. But we can't hurt other people either - it's not fair. We exist so that we can protect people, we protect the weak - we don't hurt them.' She kept her voice gentle the whole time and made sure not to crowd the traumatised woman.

Watching from across the room, Doyle held his breath - anxious in case Cordy was putting herself in more danger than she could handle. 'Cordy…' he said weakly, as she took a few more steps towards Dana, 'be careful.'

'It's OK - I got it,' she said, still keeping her voice low, as if talking to a frightened horse, and not taking her eyes off the other woman. 'We found out who hurt you, Dana. It was a man called Walter Kindel. He tried to rob a liquor store five years ago and the police shot him. He's dead. He can never hurt you again. But we need you to come with us so we can keep you safe.' She held out her hand, and looked softly into Dana's eyes, willing her to take it. Dana looked unsure. 'We're both slayers, Dana, that makes us sisters. I won't hurt you.'

The room was entirely still - everyone waited, tensed and breathless, to see what Dana would do … and then she nodded and reached out and took Cordy's hand. The whole room let out a breath of relief. Cordelia smiled, and ushered her gently across the room. 'There we …' There was a sudden whizzing noise and three darts buried themselves into Dana's chest. She dropped to the floor, knocked out. Cordy looked up in alarm - to where Wesley was still holding his gun aloft. 'What did you do that for?' she demanded, furiously. 'I had her.'

'We need her contained. We couldn't trust that she would remain cooperative if we transported her conscious.' He pointed his gun at the prone slayer, ready to shoot again if she started to come to.

Cordelia stared at him in disbelief. 'But she trusted me! She was coming quietly - following me out.' There were tears of anger and frustration in her eyes. 'She won't ever trust anyone ever again, now.'

Her words - and these circumstances - echoed a painful memory for Wesley, something Angel had once said - and he fought it down; the memory of his first mistake as a watcher - the first of many: kidnapping Faith from Angel's home, ready to transport her to England - only to lose her to the darkness completely when she escaped. But this wasn't like that, he told himself. Dana was beyond Faith at her most savage, most animal. Dana had seen darkness, suffered darkness, that Faith - for all her anger - could not even conceive of. There was no coming back from the dark for Dana. 'She is beyond trust,' he told Cordelia. His voice was clipped as he spoke, sounding more British - more like a watcher - than he had done in years. 'No one would ever really be able to get through to her. She will always be a danger. To herself and other people.'

'But…'

'Come on, love,' Doyle slipped his hand into hers. 'You did great - but what's done is done. Let's get outta here.' The armed guards began to move Dana onto a gurney and strap her down - and Cordy and Doyle left them to it and headed for the stairs.

...

Still supporting the now fully unconscious Spike, Angel was staring at the grisly sight that had come to his attention whilst the others were preoccupied. Spike's dismembered hands were lying on the workbench. 'We need to get the med team down here,' he yelled at all his many underlings. 'Now!'


Out on the docks, the night air was lit up by the flashing lights of ambulances. Fred ran alongside the gurney that Spike was strapped down to, speaking into her cell phone. 'Get it prepped. Have surgery on stand by - we'll be there in ten minutes. For god's sake, tell the shaman no cadavers…' she glanced at the medical cooler container being carried past her, 'we have his hands.' She climbed into the ambulance, once Spike was securely inside - and they drove away.

Angel, Wesley and Gunn came out of the basement, with Dana strapped to a gurney - a team of armed guards surrounding her. Cordelia and Doyle were waiting for them, looking uncomfortable about something. 'Chain her into the van,' Angel was firing his instructions at his flunkies, 'I want armed guards with her riding in the back.'

'That's alright boys,' Andrew stepped out from the shadow of one of the ambulances and blocked their path. 'I'll take it from here.' Well that explained what had been troubling Doyle and Cordy.

Angel laughed, 'what?'

But Andrew stood his ground. 'Totally 'preciate your help on this one, big guy. Never could have found her without you. But you got enough problems of your own to be worrying about.'

'Get out of the way, Andrew.' He made as if to walk off. Andrew side stepped - so he was blocking his path again. 'She's a slayer. That means she's ours.'

'Yeah. Sorry. Not how it works.' He started to give instructions to his guards. 'Load her up. Don't hesitate to tranq her if she so much as…'

But Andrew got right up in his face, going on tiptoes for a moment to try and meet him eyeball to eyeball. 'No I don't think you heard me, Angel.' There was a sound of footsteps from behind him - and then a whole team of young women appeared, melting out of the shadows, flanking him. 'Think we're just gonna let you take her back to your evil stronghold? Well, as they say in Mexico … no … we're not … gonna … let you.'

'She's psychotic - and I'm not turning her over … to you.'

'You don't have a choice. Check the viewscreen, Uhura,' he gestured behind him. 'I got twelve vampyr slayers behind me, and not one of them has ever dated you. She's coming with us, one way or the other.'

Inside the crowd, Cordelia narrowed her eyes - looking at the twelve girls who were just like her, but who were working as part of a team. She wondered about them - where they came from - where they had been found, how Buffy had known to look for them. And she wondered what they did, if they were not one girl in all the world but one girl in a family. Earlier, she had called Dana her sister. These girls were her sisters too. But they didn't even know she was there.

Angel was glowering down at Andrew, refusing to back down - even in the face of unbeatable odds. 'You're way out of your league,' he said. 'I'll just clear this with Buffy.'

Andrew looked sad - and a little bit embarrassed. 'Where do you think my orders came from?' he asked quietly. Then he raised his voice, his moment of pity spent. 'News flash - nobody in our camp trust you anymore. Nobody. You work for Wolfram and Hart. Don't fool yourself… we're not on the same side. Thank you for your help but … uh … we got it.' He gestured to the slayers, and the twelve girls started to wheel Dana away. He followed on behind them - and Cordelia watched them go, holding onto Doyle's hand, and fighting the urge to run after them.

Doyle was looking at Angel though. 'Listen, bud - what he said … it's not... I'm sure…'

'It's fine,' Angel said, though his expression was closed and his voice was blank. Wesley turned to look at him. 'So that's it? You just gonna let them take her away?'

'She's one of theirs. They can handle it. Besides … you heard the man. We got enough problems of our own.'


Spike sat in his hospital bed - his arms were reattached now - which seemed like a bloody miracle, but there it was. They were securely bandaged though, and he only knew they were there because he could see them. Feeling was not yet restored. He didn't know if that was drugs or nerve endings. Angel walked up to the stand in the doorway.

'Come to tap dance on the patient, have we doc? I'd give you the finger … but apparently I won't have the motor skills until the drugs wear off.'

'Lot of pain?' he walked into the room and stood by the bed.

'More than I'd like - but not as much as you would. Just what I deserve.'

Angel sighed, 'I didn't say that.'

'No, I did.' He looked up at his old grand sire. 'The lass thought I killed her family,' he said. 'And I'm supposed to what? Complain 'cause hers wasn't one of the hundreds of families I did kill? I'm not saying you're right,' he said quickly, ''cause … uh … I'm physically incapable of saying that. But - for a demon - I never did much think about the nature of evil.' He hung his head and thought about his life back in its heyday, back in his prime. William the Bloody - up against the wall, nothing but fists and fangs. 'No. just threw myself in, thought it was a party. I liked the rush. I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims.'

'I couldn't take my eyes off them,' Angel admitted, quietly. He had his hands in his pockets and like Spike - his head was bowed as he thought back to the days when his brutal, primal nature was allowed to the fore. His eyes were soft and reflective as he admitted to himself, and Spike, the depth of the evil he had perpetrated. 'I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art. The destruction of a human being.'

He thought of what he had done to Drusilla, to the sweet girl with the sight who foresaw her own demise. And once he had taken everything from her, when her mind was truly lost - that was when he had turned her. On the day she took her holy orders. Eternal torment. She had been Angelus' finest work. But to take a child - a true innocent - and create the violent, savage creature they had fought tonight - with no demon inside. A human soul that broken… he shook his head. 'I would have considered Dana a masterpiece.'

'What happens to her?' Spike asked.

'I don't know … um ... Andrew and the slayers took her. Didn't trust us to help her.'

'Andrew double crossed us?' he sounded surprised, 'that's a good move.' He thought about it more and chuckled. 'Maybe there's hope for the little ponce yet.' The smile slid from his face. 'Though the tingling in my forearms tells me she's too far gone to help. She's … one of us now. A monster.'

'She's an innocent victim,' Angel protested. Spike sighed and looked him in the eyes. 'So were we, once upon a time,' he said heavily.

Angel nodded - feeling that same weight. 'Once upon a time.'


When Angel finally made it back to his penthouse, he relieved the au pair who had been watching over Connor and sat down in his little bedroom, watching him sleep. What had happened to Dana - that was a parent's worst nightmare. Any parent, worthy of the title, would give up everything they had, their very lives, to protect their children from experiencing even one tenth of the harm she had suffered. They would do it gladly. He knew - deep in his bones, to the core of his being and to the very bottom of his unbeating heart that there was nothing he wouldn't do for Connor, to keep him safe. Nothing he wouldn't willingly sacrifice. Connor was the only part of Angel that mattered.

But doing anything to keep Connor safe, sacrifice, that was what brought him here in the first place. To Wolfram and Hart. Giving up your life for the one you loved was the easy part. Living eternally with no hope … that was the part that hurt. The place where regret and remorse intertwined with the knowledge that he had done the right thing and would do it again without hesitation; make the same mistake over and over because, in the moment, it hadn't been a mistake; that was the grey shade of twilight that he found himself banished to. And it was sapping everything from him. Sapping his will, sapping his soul - and sapping the trust that other people had always placed in him.

Just this evening, he had ruminated on the lack of trust he felt from his team. They didn't believe his word when he told them Lilah was plotting something. After all their years together, after all Lilah had done to them … once they were here, their compass needle had spun round so far that up was down and black was white … and Angel's word could not be trusted against Lilah Morgan's. It made him feel lonely inside his own team, lonelier than he had felt since… since he had pushed them away, back when Lilah was using Darla to drive him crazy. It weighed heavy on his heart.

But now there was added sorrow to pile onto his soul. Six months ago, Buffy had called all the slayers in all the world. She had called Cordelia. Cordelia the Vampire Slayer. And for six months she - and Doyle - had kept this secret, not told Angel. He was their family - and yet they had kept something this huge from him. And it came down to trust. They didn't want Wolfram and Hart knowing Cordy was one of the chosen, didn't want to be used by them. Didn't trust Angel not to use this knowledge to benefit his firm. He had been visiting them, in their little offices, for months now - late night trips when the going was too tough - and they had welcomed him, comforted him. But he realised now that they hadn't trusted him.

And then there was what Andrew had said. 'Nobody in our camp trusts you anymore. Nobody.'

Well, Xander had never trusted him - there was no loss there. And Giles … things had never really been good between him and the watcher ever since Angelus had murdered his girlfriend. He had tolerated Angel's presence for Buffy's sake - but he had never forgiven him for Jenny. And nor should he. But Willow? Who had seen him at his worst and reensouled him twice, who had helped them out just last year? Who had tried to destroy the world herself one time? Will didn't trust him?

Or Faith? Faith. Of all the souls he had ever saved - he had worked the longest and the hardest on hers. They were kindred spirits, who understood darkness and power - and having to work everyday to hold yourself back. She had broken out of prison to save him, walked through his mind to bring him back to himself. She had always said that - no matter what - she would never give up on Angel, because he had never given up on her… was that no longer true?

And worst of all. Hardest of all... He closed his eyes and flinched as he remembered the fleeting look of pity on Andrew's face. Buffy. Andrew had said she didn't trust him and - even after all these years apart - the thought of that still made him want to die.

He looked around - at the apartment - at the beautiful view just outside of the window, and at Connor, flushed and sleeping in his little bed. They needed to get out of here, he realised. They couldn't stay. If being here meant no one, from his closest friends to the one girl he had ever truly loved, couldn't trust him because of what he was a part of - then he needed to not be a part of it. He had to find a way out. It would be difficult. It would probably take some time. It would be dangerous - and he would have to do it in such a way that still protected Connor at all costs. But nevertheless - he was determined - him and Connor, one way or the other, were leaving Wolfram and Hart for good.


Doyle and Cordy arrived back at their office. Doyle wriggled out of his leather jacket and hung it on the coat stand, then shot a wondering glance across at Cordy. She had been very quiet on the way home. Extremely quiet. 'You OK?' he asked her, settling down on the green sofa. His crossword was still there from earlier - and he folded up the paper and put it to one side. 'You still thinkin' about Dana?'

'Huh? … oh … sort of…' She took her own jacket off, wandered over to the coffee maker and switched it on, before flipping the switch back off again and sighing. 'It's too late for coffee.' She drummed her fingers on the side and stared out of the window, biting her lip.

Doyle fixed her with his gaze, 'Cordelia, sweetheart - what's up? You've been quiet for hours. You're distracted … what are y' thinkin'?'

'It's…' she turned to look at him, twisting her hands together in front of her. 'I mean … it's nothing. You probably won't like it so … it's nothing.'

'Cordy,' he furrowed his brow and held his hand out to her, silently asking her to come and sit next to him. 'Talk to me.'

She took his hand and let herself be drawn onto the couch. Once she was sitting next to him, instead of talking, she leaned across and kissed him, very softly, on the lips. 'You know I love you more than anything, right?' she said, when she had pulled away.

He frowned even deeper, not sure where this was headed, but nodded.

'And getting married to you is really important to me, you know that?'

He nodded again.

'But…' she twisted her hands in her lap this time, and glanced downward. 'I mean - it's the marriage that's important right? Not the wedding. One is just a day, but the other is our entire life together. It doesn't matter if our wedding is - you know - just us at the courthouse?' She glanced at him, anxiously.

'You don't want a proper wedding?' he asked sounding surprised, 'where is this coming from? What happened to flowers and cake and the whole wedding industry?'

'It's not that I don't want that,' she said. She took a deep breath. 'It's just … tonight … tonight changed a lot of things for me. It got me thinking.'

'What do you mean?'

She paused for a moment, wondering how to put it - everything that was going on in her head. 'I'm … well I guess I'm here, on my own - with you. The champion of Los Angeles. And I help the hopeless - and that's great … but tonight, I guess I realised I'm also part of something much bigger. My power, I share it with all these other girls - and there's no one but us in the world who know what it's like to have that power - that destiny. It's something we share and …' she shook her head. 'I guess I saw those girls today, with Andrew - with Dana - and … I dunno, I felt like I was lost. Or like - I was nearly found but they just missed me or… I'm not explaining this very well.'

Doyle was watching her carefully, his eyes were patient and showing the beginnings of understanding. 'You felt like you belonged with those girls - that you should have gone with them - instead of staying here.'

'I'll always belong with you - and nowhere else,' she said quickly, her eyes becoming frightened at the thought he might think she was telling him she wanted to leave. He smiled. 'I know,' he said, 'but belonging with me and being part of the slayer group doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.'

Her face relaxed into a relieved smile. 'Right - I just … I want to be a part of the slayer world. I wanna get to know other slayers. I want them to at least know I exist, you know? And I guess I want to find out more about what my destiny means - from experts.'

'Uhuh,' he nodded his head, and then thought back to the beginnings of this conversation. 'So - uh - where does all the talk about our wedding come into this?' he asked her.

She took another deep breath. 'It's … and if you disagree … I mean I'm being selfish - I know it …'

'Cordy.'

'I don't want to use the money we've saved for a wedding,' she said. 'Not when it's just one day - and we're so poor. I want to use it … I wanna … I wanna go to England, instead,' she admitted, her words tumbling out in a sudden rush. 'That's where the watcher's council has always been based. It's where the experts on - well - me are. I wanna go there and I want to speak to Giles … and I want to speak to Buffy.'


A/N That marks the halfway point of the season. I'm going to take a (hopefully) short hiatus in an attempt to get ahead of the story again. Thanks to everybody for reading this far - and especial thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment. I'm so ready to be done with this series and it's only the knowledge of how unbelievably lame it would be for me to get this far and then give up now, this close to the end, that keeps me going. But all your kind words, encouragement and our interactions really do motivate me to keep writing so thank you - it is always much appreciated.

When we do come back, the next episode will be 'You're Welcome'.