Downstairs

In the end, Angel's need for a drink (and, okay, an appearance at the Bar of Moste Evile for reputation's sake) eclipsed his worry about the Doctor's reaction to the place. When they stepped off the lifts he headed straight for the swinging double doors that led to the bar.

While most bars were dim, this one leaned into the shadows of being barely lit. A sparse light came from somewhere behind the bar and glowed behind the long tapestries that ran down stone walls. Angel could see just fine, as could the other vampires, but he noticed that the Doctor squinted at the forms tucked into the black leather couches along the walls, his pupils dilating to take in what little light there was in the room.

The bar itself was long and black with silver bands of metal that wrapped around it. While Angel would have preferred the feel and smell of a wooden bar, (part of what he enjoyed about the Dragon's Crown) he could understand why wood had not been involved in a vampire bar. After all, wood was one solid punch away from being splintered into several vampire-killing weapons. And Emily had made it clear that she didn't like her customers staking each other. Particularly when the dead party hadn't paid off his tab yet.

Angel sat down on one of the stools at the bar, gazing over the liquor selection in front of him while he waited for the Doctor to find the stool next to him in the dark. Angel didn't really need to browse the liquor selection; he knew what they carried. But it gave him something to look at other than the screen displaying tonight's human rotation. Maybe the Doctor wouldn't notice the two or three especially tasty-looking humans walking around, enticing purchases.

A bartender Angel knew, but hadn't seen in a while, came over to them. "Spirit or flesh?" she asked, her voice low and pleasingly sultry.

"Spirit," Angel replied. "Scotch. Anything over 15 years."

"Tea," the Doctor said; his gaze had found the tall athletic woman with spiky purple hair who paced behind the bar, his eyes lingering on the pale scars that stood out on her olive-toned wrists as she ran her fingers temptingly along the surface in front of them.

The bartender lifted her eyebrows. Angel could see the flare of her nostrils as she inhaled. "You got it," she said, her voice still just as sultry.

"Well," the Doctor said, turning to Angel, "that was a bad bit of news. I hate having nothing to do."

"Betharr," Angel said, partly to himself as he mused on the conversation. "She mentioned that he has the power. I wouldn't give him my soul, of course, but… Maybe he'd take something else."

"Not so much as I'd resort to deals with demons just to fill the time," the Doctor continued. "And people call me impatient."

Angel looked over at the Doctor sharply, but his gaze softened as he realized that the Doctor had a point. Apparently, Judith and the TARDIS were just going to...come back. On their own. In what state and in how long, Angel had no idea, and he burned to know so much that he started considering going back to Summer Rain to make more trades.

The bartender - Reishi, Angel remembered her name was - set Angel's scotch in front of him. For a human, it would have been a double pour, but here at Decade, spirits were given according to vampire metabolisms. A moment later, a teacup, teabag, and small hot water pot was placed in front of the Doctor.

"Let me know if you need anything else," she said, already wandering away to tend to new customers.

Angel picked up his drink and took a long sip, letting it sit on his tongue for several seconds before swallowing. Finally, he responded to the Doctor in a soft, even tone, "I find it very hard to be patient in situations like this. I don't like how many unknowns there are. At least with Betharr, I know both the outcome and the potential consequences."

The Doctor smiled at him. "I promise," he said, "the TARDIS will take good care of her. And if it's jumping forward like I originally thought, then she won't even know what she missed."

"And what will that be?" Angel asked, looking over at the Doctor. "What if it's years? What if she misses the birth of her first grandchild, Doctor? Hell, what if she misses that grandchild's wedding? And we could have brought her back now."

The Doctor nodded, plucking the teabag from his cup and turning it between his fingers. "I'll keep working on the device to call it back," he said. "Shouldn't take more than a few weeks."

"She could lose her job by then," Angel murmured, partly to himself. "Once her vacation time runs out and she still doesn't show up, that's it. And she plays cards every other week with her friends. They've been leaving messages on her phone every day, each one more frantic, and I don't know what to tell them because I don't really exist to them, so I've just been ignoring it, but..." He sighed and shook his head.

The Doctor's nose wrinkled slightly, the expression somewhere between disgust and amusement.

"What?" Angel asked, irritation bubbling. "Doctor, this is the situation, here. This is what I'm having to deal with and why I'm not patient about it. What am I supposed to tell the people in her life? How am I supposed to explain that she's out of town accidentally and will be back at some point before the- What'd you say, the 26th century?"

"I can tell them," the Doctor said, tucking his expression away into something more sympathetic. "I'm good at explanations. And lies. Not in that order."

Angel let out a chuckle and took another long sip of his drink. "You feel like talking to her boss, too, once her vacation time runs out?"

"Sure! I'm great with bosses." The Doctor dropped his tea bag back in the cup and poured the steaming water over it. "It's just a job anyway, Angel. Is it worth all the fuss?"

"Yes," Angel replied firmly. "It's not just a job. She enjoys it. It's part of who she is. It makes her feel like a valuable part of the community. I'm not going to let it all get taken away from her just because your ship decided to take her for a joyride."

The Doctor's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. He twisted the teacup in the saucer. "You're right. I'm sorry," he said softly. "I forgot how...human she is."

Angel nodded gratefully. That was something, anyway. He took another sip of his drink.

"Why don't you know her friends?" the Doctor said. "You know Judith very well."

Angel decided not to take the way that the Doctor said that last bit as another Because she's your girlfriend. He'd probably guessed that they were sleeping together anyway; the mistake was easy to make when Angel wasn't willing to go into details.

Angel shrugged. "Just never crossed paths," he replied. "We run in different circles. Except the Goldbergs, I guess. They live a few floors above me."

"So how did she end up in your circle?"

"Judith?" Angel took another small sip of his drink. "You remember the last time you were here? In my timeline? I was trying to decide if I should buy milk for a kid?"

"She wasn't the kid, was she?" The Doctor paused, looking up at the ceiling. "No, it was two little boys... You said I could have one in a pinch."

Angel laughed. He'd forgotten he'd said that. "Probably Calder, since Judith would have staked me if I'd given you her son."

"That was it!" the Doctor said, slapping the countertop. "So she was the frightening mother. Now that you mention it, she did have that look about her."

Angel chuckled again. He couldn't deny that. He also couldn't deny that he found it weirdly sexy. But he wasn't going to mention that. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's her."

"That was such a long time ago," the Doctor said wistfully. He smiled at his teacup and lifted it to his lips.

The purple-haired athletic woman who had been pacing behind the bar with a seductive sway stopped in front of the Doctor and stretched her arm out temptingly on the table. "Something a little stronger, darling?" she asked. "It's only a small upcharge if you want it from somewhere other than the wrist…"

The Doctor set his teacup down and looked up at the woman's eyes. "Is this really what you want to do?" he asked.

She blinked at him, either surprised or not understanding, or both. "Don't get asked that a lot here…" she said, her smile only faltering a little before it came back, as coy as before. "We get paid really well," she told him. She offered her wrist again.

"Lots of things pay well," the Doctor said. "So I'm told, I wouldn't know. But," he paused, still looking in her eyes, "there's a whole world out there. Why pick this corner? Do you love it?"

A spark of understanding crossed her expression. "You're not a blood-drinker," she said, getting it. She smiled, withdrawing her arm. "Have you ever tried it, then? It's a rush like you wouldn't believe."

Angel tensed and tried to hide his expression behind another long sip of his scotch. From what he could tell, the Doctor hadn't yet had that experience, and he probably wouldn't call it a rush when it came; especially if he ended up dying from it.

The Doctor chuckled. "I was once nearly drained by a plasmavore on the moon," he said cheerfully. "I'm afraid it wasn't for me. Mean old lady. And then she tried to blow me up!"

The woman raised her eyebrows, amused. "Well, I don't know about plasmavores, but you should give vampires a try sometime. They're not so bad." She gave Angel a wink and turned with a smooth grace to continue her hunt for takers. "Have a great evening, boys."

They watched her go and after a long moment of silence between them, Angel said, "Sorry. This isn't the sort of place I normally bring...anyone."

The Doctor looked around. "I'm interested in new places," he said. "And she was also very human." He leaned out to catch another glance as she leaned over a different table.

Feeling a little defensive, despite the fact that the Doctor hadn't said anything at all judgmental, Angel said, "They're all willing. The humans. They're not drugged or hypnotized or anything. I checked."

Asked, was more accurate. Asked and not seen evidence to the contrary and therefore not questioned it.

The Doctor looked at him for a long moment, taking in Angel's words, but also seeming to look through them. "So you come here alone?" he said.

Angel dipped his head in acknowledgement. "When I do come," he said. "I still prefer the Dragon's Crown."

"It's better lit, I'll give it that," the Doctor said, looking out at the dark room. "Why? What do you like about the Dragon's Crown?"

"It's more...in the middle," Angel replied. "Like, it's still a demon bar, but only some of the time. The rest of the time they serve normal humans normal foods like meat and potatoes."

"And this place is one of the extremes?" the Doctor said.

Angel laughed. "How could you tell? It's nice here, when that's your mood, but it's not an every night kind of a place. Not for me, anyway."

The Doctor nodded and he took another sip of his tea. "It must be difficult to have a foot in both places," he said. "There is room in the middle, but there isn't much room. I wonder sometimes what gets lost when we carve that space out for ourselves."

Angel raised an eyebrow, interested. "The edges?" he guessed. "I mean, being in the middle means you can't be at either end, right?"

"It's not a literal space, you know," the Doctor said, an amused smile pulling at his lips.

"Sometimes, the constraints feel tight enough," Angel murmured, taking another sip of his drink. "I don't know, Doctor. I guess it is what it is. A place for every mood, and my mood is usually more middle."

"But this is a mood you can't show your friends."

Angel's mouth twitched. "No…" he agreed softly. He looked at the Doctor. "Does that mean you're not my friend, then?" Angel remembered the last time he had met this version of the Doctor - the time over 200 years ago when Angel ended up drinking the Doctor half-dry (you can still die at half-dry, make no mistake about that) - the Doctor had said that he and Angel were friends. He had told Angel what had happened to his homeworld because as friends, Angel should know. So that meant that their friendship would develop over time, with Angel knowing how it likely ends all along. Did that mean that Angel had a moral obligation to keep this particular friend at bay?

Angel suddenly remembered the other part of their conversation with Summer Rain: the part about Utah. It had gotten shoved aside with Angel's bitter disappointment at his answer, but now it occurred to him: maybe he hadn't killed the Doctor. Maybe the Doctor survived Angel's bite and lived to die in Utah. Or maybe - for some reason - the Doctor regained consciousness long enough to get himself to Utah and died there from blood loss? That didn't make sense...

"I think we could be friends," the Doctor interrupted Angel's thoughts, sounding pleased with the idea with an almost playground simplicity. "I don't mind being a different-ish sort of friend. That's usually where I land anyway."

Angel let out a huff of air through his nose. "And you don't mind that my moods sometimes look like this place?" he asked.

The Doctor looked around again. The athletic woman has settled down in one of the chairs in the back, her arm stretched out toward a vampire in the chair next to her. "You should see me in a bad mood sometime," the Doctor said, turning back to his cup.

"Who said this was my bad mood place?" Angel responded, turning an eyebrow up at the Doctor.

"I guess you didn't," the Doctor admitted. "You would have to catch me in a Time Lord mood."

"And what kind of a mood is that?"

"Oh, it's horribly stuffy," the Doctor said with a laugh. "It's really the worst."

"Stuffy, huh?" Angel nodded. "I guess that's why we have rooms behind waterfalls, right? To break those kinds of moods."

"Good grief! Don't remind me!" The Doctor dropped his head into the counter.

"Yeah, right?" Angel agreed. "It's weird with fairies. Like, I know some of the darker ones are into some really kinky stuff, but 'fairy sex dungeon' just sounds like an oxymoron."

"That's not what it sounded like," the Doctor muttered into the sleeve of his arm that he'd brought up to cover his head.

"No?" Angel glanced over at him. "What'd it sound like to you? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's fine. Nothing. I don't know what...it sounded like." The Doctor flopped his fingers in Angel's direction.

Starting to suspect that Time Lords might be asexual (asexual species often had...unpredictable reactions when dropped into a conversation about sex), Angel leaned over slightly and sniffed. It was a creepy but useful tool vampires had, and it let Angel get away with not asking out loud what the Doctor's sexual history might be.

Well, he was not a virgin, but Angel wasn't going to pick apart the scents beyond that.

"Okay…" Angel said, chalking it up to more weirdness about the Doctor that he just didn't understand. He finished off his drink.

Eventually the Doctor emerged from under his arm. He tugged his bow tie back into place and arranged himself on the stool like he'd just sat down for the first time. "I liked your answer, by the way. To Summer's question."

Angel's eyes widened slightly and he glanced around quickly to make sure no one was listening in. "Yeah, thanks," he said. "Good bluff, huh?"

"I know a bluff when I see one," the Doctor said softly.

Angel stood up and leaned over the bar, ostensibly reaching for a bottle on the Doctor's side. While he lifted up bottles to look at the labels, he said under his breath, "Good, then if it gets out, you can tell everyone what a great job I did fooling the fae."

The Doctor smiled warmly. "Of course," he said.

Angel sat back and found that he'd accidentally chosen a bottle of tequila. He wasn't really one for tequila, but feeling like he'd committed, poured himself a shot. "It's all so delicate," Angel murmured, half to himself.

"Your lie?" the Doctor said, conversationally.

"All of it," Angel replied. "One lie can bring down empires, whether it's true or not."

The Doctor sat for a quiet moment and then said playfully, "I thought you said you weren't in charge."

"Not of the territory around the Dragon's Crown," Angel replied, shooting the Doctor a look. "I've got other territory. And influence. And it's been unstable for years, now."

"What happens if it collapses?"

"Well, there's a power vacuum, to start," Angel replied, and paused to take a sip of his tequila. "There's violence, chaos, some evil things get hurt but more civilians get caught in the crossfire. Then whoever's biggest and baddest wins, and my section of town is overrun with new laws. There's no way of knowing what those would be, of course, but I'm going to guess with how tight I have mine, the pendulum would swing just as far the other way."

The Doctor nodded. "So it's best to keep a hold on your little corner," he concluded. He sipped at his tea. "That sounds like a terrible position to be in."

"Only if you don't like your corner," Angel replied.

"I'd rather not be stuck anywhere," the Doctor said. "No matter how nice a corner it is."

Angel nodded thoughtfully. "The freedom was nice," he admitted. "But it's worth the payoff, I think. I mean, it has to be, right?"

"Why would it have to be?"

"A little of my freedom for the humans' freedom to walk above ground without getting attacked and eaten?" Angel glanced at the Doctor, one eyebrow raised.

The Doctor looked stunned for a moment. Slowly his expression passed through interested in Angel to that warm, glowing smile that the Doctor sometimes revealed. Like Angel had done something particularly amazing. "I've never been able to pay that price," the Doctor said softly. "Not willingly."

That surprised Angel. The Doctor had been willing to sacrifice his homeworld to save the universe. He valued his freedom that much more? Perhaps he hadn't sacrificed his homeworld so willingly. Angel hadn't actually gotten the full story on that. He wondered if the Doctor would tell him, if he asked. He decided to try.

"How willingly did you pay the price of Gallifrey?"

The question ran visibly through the Doctor like a chill down his spine. He composed himself in a series of motions, like a ritual that cleaned him. He tugged at his cuffs, adjusted the angle of the handle on his teacup, and then touched (but didn't adjust) the bow tie. "I don't think willing would be the word I would use," he said. "But no one forced me. I think it was quite the opposite of that."

Angel nodded slowly, letting that information sink in. An un-forced un-willingness to destroy your own planet sounded about right. Angel could fairly easily place himself in a similar situation, having been asked many times to sacrifice much less and done it unwillingly but without the proverbial gun to his head.

Angel took another sip of his tequila. "I guess after that, you have to have something you're unwilling to let go of," he said. Or else where did it stop?

The Doctor tipped his head back, seeming to consider Angel's statement. "I think...freedom has been more the thing I hold onto. I guess that's the same as being unwilling to let go." He let out a breath of air that was something of a laugh. "How do you know so much about me?"

Angel briefly considered holding the answer over him and letting it dangle the same way so many of Angel's questions seemed to around the Doctor. But the destruction of one's homeworld seemed off-limits for pettiness like that, so Angel gave him a little smile and said, "You told me."

Actually laughing this time, the Doctor said, "God, I'm sorry. That sounds like a terrible conversation. I mean, I suspect I'll get around to it anyway, but still, such a downer."

Angel's smile got a little bigger. "Just a bit," he replied. "But it was...nice that you finally gave me a straight answer on something."

"I was dying, wasn't I?" the Doctor said. He held up his hand. "Don't answer that."

Angel let out a breath and finished the tequila, glad to have another reason to stop himself from saying, Not yet. Maybe?

Two drinks in and in such a short amount of time, Angel felt brave enough to ask. "Tell me about Utah."

The Doctor tended to flinch in reverse. Instead of a sudden jolt of motion (which was honestly how he normally moved), he would fall suddenly still until he recovered himself. He did by turning the teacup so the handle pointed in a new direction. "I wouldn't worry about that, Angel," he said softly.

"I am worried," Angel admitted, just as softly. "We're friends, remember?"

That at least made the Doctor look up at him. A smile pulled at his lips. "We are," he said. "Of course we are." He let out a long sigh and cleared his throat. "I don't really have the details," he said.

"But that's where you die?" Angel asked.

The Doctor closed his eyes. It might as well have been a yes.

Angel nodded slowly, taking that in. So. If the Doctor's death was Angel's fault, he somehow got himself to Utah with half his blood drained. Otherwise, Angel was off the hook. "What's special about Utah?" Angel asked. "Can't you just...not go to Utah?"

"It's..." the Doctor's fingers adjusted the teacup, "fixed. I think. Unchanging. Unalterable." He shook his head. "But it's a while off," he said with forced cheerfulness. "I shouldn't know. I mean, everyone's death is a while off. This is what comes from being nosy."

Angel swallowed. "Do you know how it happens? Why you even go to Utah?"

"I go because it's a fixed point," the Doctor said, his fingers fanned away from his cup. "The why will almost inevitably take care of itself. I will go because I went. It's-" the Doctor let out a sigh that sounded old and tired. "I've been working on it. Between-" he waved his arms at the bar.

None of these answers were helpful. "How do you know it's fixed?" Angel asked. "Who told you about this in the first place?"

The Doctor fidgeted, felt his pockets, ran a hand through his hair. "I did," he mumbled. "In a roundabout way."

Angel blinked. "You did? You...told yourself. That you were going to die in Utah." Silence fell for a moment and then Angel said, "That's kind of brilliant."

"Only I don't know why!" the Doctor said, sounding frustrated for the first time. "My presence twice only makes it more fixed. I thought maybe it meant there was something I could do, but I wonder if it was just engineered to trap me."

"Why would you trap yourself?" Angel asked, shaking his head. "If you told yourself, you probably had a reason. What was all that talk about alternatives?"

The Doctor turned on his stool toward Angel. "If my invitation was a part of the fixed point then I might not have had a choice," the Doctor said in a whisper. His fingers tapped on top of the bar as he continued to speak and he sounded far away, almost like he was talking to himself. "I think the fixed point is engineered. And if someone else built it to trap me, then I should have some room to make adjustments within the point. I thought maybe I could break it or slip it or-" he shrugged. "But everything I look at causes too much damage. Fixed points are powerful, stable things. It's like trying to slip through a mountain more than slipping out of a noose."

Angel thought about that for a moment. "Summer Rain had an alternative," he said softly. "Is that not worth the price of telling her the place and time of her death?"

The Doctor shook his head. "We don't know her price," he said. "If she thinks it's worth the equivalent of moving a mountain? I'm not willing to risk giving something that's going to hurt someone else just to save my skin."

Angel grunted, not being able to argue with that. "Damn," he said. "Didn't I tell you not to make deals with the Fae? She still has information we both want, plus information I don't want her to have." He sighed, leaning on his elbows on the bar, thinking about the information that seemed so close and yet so far out of reach. "I can look into it on my end, if you want," Angel offered. "See if I can find you an alternative."

The Doctor lifted his eyes to look at Angel like he was seeing him for the first time. Amazement and sadness mixed to the point where Angel thought that he might cry; but instead he sniffed and dropped his eyes again. "I haven't told anyone," he said softly.

"And I won't tell anyone," Angel promised. "But I have resources. I'll look."

"Thank you," the Doctor said. "That's kind of you." He met Angel's eyes again. "It's nice to have someone on my side."

Angel smiled a little. It was nice to learn that he probably didn't kill the Doctor. "Of course," Angel replied. "I can't imagine you not having lots of people on your side, though, if you asked."

Sitting up, the Doctor shook his head. "Not as such," he said softly. "Amy and Rory...you've met them, right?" He squinted up at the ceiling in thought. "Yes, yes, with the vampire Master. They know and of course they're doing what they can but they're too close. They saw it and so they're part of it in a way." The Doctor leaned his elbows onto the bar, his voice barely a whisper. "And there was one more, but she's even more involved. Everyone else...they want it."

"I don't," Angel said softly. "Even though you did get water all over my wood floor."

The Doctor laughed. "I was worried that might be a sticking point," he said.

Angel straightened up and said, "The finish protected it better than I thought. You made a narrow escape on that one." Angel set his glass aside and added, "How's your tea? I'm done here, if you are."

The Doctor adjusted the angle of the cup one last time. "I could go," he said. He stood up, swinging his arms. "Now I can check 'visit vampire bar' off my bucket list."

"Was it seriously on there?" Angel asked, flagging down the bartender. Part of him almost believed it, given the Doctor's eccentricities.

"I tend to add them as I come across them," the Doctor admitted. "It leaves room for spontaneity."

"Makes sense," Angel replied, and then said to the bartender, "Put his on my tab. Plus a shot of tequila." He gestured toward the bottle he'd stolen.

The bartender rolled her eyes, but nodded. While they waited, Angel turned to the Doctor and with a chuckle said, "Buying you drinks, taking you back to my place… I guess we're starting to make quite the couple after all."

The Doctor only smiled at him like he didn't get the joke, so Angel just tapped his Palm ring to the device the bartender handed him, letting the joke slide awkwardly away. When it binged its approval, they turned to head for the door.

At some point over the past week, Angel suspected that he had become friends with the Doctor. Or at least he had started to accept his masked presence, like a loud fan slowly becoming white noise. The Doctor talked happily as they made their way south out of the green, ivy-covered Uptown and into the older sections of Galway with its cement sidewalks and glass bridges between skyscrapers.

As they walked and as the Doctor chatted, Angel found his thoughts returning to their conversation with Summer Rain. She had said that the Doctor was right that the TARDIS would come back on its own. Apparently, their solution really was to wait. (Short of selling their souls to Batharr, that is.)

Well, that was a fine backup plan. If all else failed, it was good to know that Judith and the TARDIS really would just appear at some point. It took some of the pressure off.

But they still didn't know when she was coming back, and Angel would be damned if Judith missed out on the rest of her life just because he and the Doctor could wait an eternity for her.

The PTB had failed him, Summer Rain had given an unsatisfactory answer (a stupid answer really; he had grossly overpaid for that information). But she had given Angel one useful tidbit: there were beings out there who could pull objects out of the time vortex.

Angel still had work to do.