Sympathy – Kate
The worst part of any police officer's job is having to inform the family of death. I haven't been a member of the police force for years and I'm not reporting a death, but it's the only comparison I've got.
The news I'm about to deliver is going to rip open old wounds. They had grieved, or repressed, and in either case they moved on. It would be one thing if I could just say Angel's back, sure they'd be furious, but deep down they'd be happy too, only Angel's not back, and he's not dead either. That would be too simple.
I'd had the feeling I was being watched for almost a month. He might have been there longer, but he wasn't threatening, didn't set off my internal alarms, so the feeling took awhile to seep into my awareness. After I became aware that I was being observed I started looking for my observer, but he's good at lurking I didn't have any luck until the storm.
It was a real cloudburst, complete with thunder and lightening, the type of night no one goes out in without a pressing reason. I was hurrying in from my car when I got the feeling of being watched. I hurried up to my room and started scanning the streets with my binoculars, looking for anyone just standing around.
I spotted him when a lightening bolt illuminated the city for a second. He was pressed against the wall of the building opposite mine.
I recognized the near panic in his stance before I realized who he was. Then I started looking for the threat, but a second later the sound of thunder rolled across the night and he practically burrowed into the brick wall in his desperation to get away.
It probably wasn't the smartest thing that I've ever done, but I grabbed a flashlight and my rain slicker and went out to get him.
Angel was still there when I got outside. His hair and clothes where plastered to his body, utterly drenched. His dark eyes where wide and fearful. He whimpered as the flashlight's beam caught him. The inhuman noise froze me for a second. Then I realized that the bright light was probably painful to his night-adapted eyes.
"Angel?" I asked lowering the flashlight. I could hear him draw quick, panicky, unneeded breaths, and see him shifting indecisively. He was ready to bolt, but something was holding him here. I knew I didn't want him to just disappear again. "Angel, come in, get out of the storm," I offered, keeping my voice soft. I'm not good at reassurance, but I had to try.
I felt like I was approaching a wild animal. I could sense that he recognized me at least a little. He must have, that would explain why he had been watching me. He recognized me as being familiar, but he couldn't quite bring himself to trust me, to show himself to me.
I slowly backed up to the door and stood there, holding it open for him, waiting. The next bolt of lightening made the choice for him and he darted past me into the building.
Once he entered the well-lit hallway I let the door close and turned for my first real look at him. His clothes looked like he'd been living on the streets for a while. There was a thick layer of grime on his skin and his hair was long enough to look matted. Still, under the dirt he looked physically healthy. I wasn't sure what that meant for a vampire, maybe their bodies don't change, maybe all it showed was that he had been healthy at the time he was changed. I didn't know, still it was better than if he'd looked sick or hurt. I didn't fool myself thought, the ferality in his expression and the way he held himself spoke of something frighteningly wrong.
It took me better than two hours to coax him from the entrance up to my apartment. Once he was there I thought I could get him cleaned up and into some dry clothing, but he immediately found the most easily defended corner in my apartment and curled up there.
For the rest of the night I could feel him watching me. His dark fearful eyes were mostly watching me as a potential threat, but there was an odd spark of curiosity in those eyes as well.
Whatever had happened to him, Angel remembered enough to want to trust me. Which means he'll remember the others even more and maybe that's reason for hope.
I have to remind myself of that as the three of them look up at me in surprise when I enter the offices of Angel Investigations. Once I tried working with them, but it didn't work out on a day-to-day basis. There were just too many personality clashes; Gunn and I's respective backgrounds made it inevitable that we wouldn't like each other. Cordelia and I isn't really a better combination, even if the reasons aren't as straight forward. Between the two of us it was always one part competition, one part her holding a grudge about my dead vendetta against Angel and one part seeing me as someone who might have endangered Angel's soul, even thought my attraction to him ended the night I found out vampires were real. Well, maybe not my attraction, but I wasn't going to act on it. A cross-species romance just seemed a little too complicated and I can't see dating a guy, no matter how great he might be, that on some level has to regard me as a potential meal.
With Wesley I might have been able to work things out eventually. Both of us see the other as an armature, a civilian, but we could have made a truce. It still wouldn't have solved things between myself and the other two. I tried for a while, and it was worth it when Angel was still there, but after he disappeared I didn't seem to have a place with them. I came as Angel's friend, not theirs. I haven't seen them in years so the startled looks they give me aren't exactly a surprise.
I let them stand there stunned speechless for a good while because every carefully prepared speech just flew out of my head.
"Kate, can we help you?" Wesley asks, count on him to remember the formalities.
"It's about Angel," I blurt out. God, I couldn't have done it worse.
Cordelia's eyes go wet with tears. Gunn looks angry. Wesley just stands there blinking.
"I told you he abandoned us again!" Gunn snaps.
And I remember how it was when Angel first vanished. There was no warning, no particularly dangerous case that we were involved in, no portents from beyond, no visions, he just didn't show up for work one night.
As it got later and later, and he didn't answer his cell or the messages we left at the Hyperion we got more and more upset. I think at the time, I probably understood Angel better than the others. It never occurred to me that he might have gone back to his revenge games with Wolfram and Hart.
I was the one who went to the Hyperion and found nothing out of place. My training as a detective told me that he'd planned to come back. Gunn refused to even consider the obvious, but the rest of us had to. Angel left the Hyperion that night and never made it to his destination. Because of what he was there wouldn't have been a body to look for.
We didn't give up right then though. We got creative, sought ever possible avenue of information. The Host, Wesley's information networks, mine, Gunn's. We went to the Powers that Be as well, but the stuck up bastards wouldn't deal with "lower beings".
We went to Sunnydale, to ask the only other Warrior that we knew of to ask on our behalf.
Buffy said Angel was fine. She said she'd have known it if he wasn't and he didn't like saying goodbye. I would have liked to argue with her, but anyone could see she was on the edge. And given how poorly I dealt with my father's death I couldn't say much about how a girl ten years my junior was failing to deal with her mother's death.
The simple fact of the matter was Buffy couldn't bare to even consider that Angel might be dead, let alone ask about his fate. She needed him to be okay and her friends stood behind her.
Wesley had a quiet, civil discussion with Rupert Giles and in the end had to agree with the other Watcher's priorities.
Cordelia demanded that the red-haired girl, Willow, find out what had happened. "Hack into someone's computer or cast a spell," Cordelia had demanded. "I don't care how, but you have to find out."
"No," Willow replied.
"I need to know," Cordelia has too much pride to ever beg, but she came close that night.
"Buffy needs to not know," Willow said and Cordelia hit her. We left very shortly after that.
Back in LA Wesley, Cordelia and I grieved for Angel while Gunn did his best to be respectful even while he insisted Angel had just left. I think it was easier for him to be angry than to be hurt.
Now I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if we'd forced Buffy to face the possibility of Angel's death all those years ago and I certainly don't have time for Gunn's self-defensive attitude.
"Angel's at my apartment," I explain, ignoring Gunn's outburst. "I think he was hurt really badly. You have to see him to understand. I don't think he disappeared of his own volition."