The hairy fifth to enslave the State
To enslave the state, though against his will
Shall be that idiot whom all despised.
He shall have hair in a generous mop.
He shall give Rome water and winter bread.
And die at the hand of his wife, no wife
To the gain of his son, no son.
12:10 29 May 2002
The Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles
Angel dozed until midday and then rose and went to find Fred. She was in the office, leafing though Wesley's books on vampire lineage.
"Hey! You feelin' better? Want some coffee?"
She got up, and he sat in the space she'd left. He relaxed against the leather, and felt her residual warmth. Closing his eyes, he remembered the weight of her body on his and wondered idly how he was going to engineer some more contact. She reappeared seconds later and he took the cup from her hand.
"What have you been reading?"
Fred hesitated, and then indicated a book on the desk in front of him. It was opened to a page depicting a family tree, showing all known members of the Order of Aurelius.
Angel quickly turned his head away, but still his eye took in a group of names close to the bottom of the page: Darla, Angelus, William The Bloody, Drusilla, Penn. "So... now you know."
Fred gave him a guilty look. "I wasn't looking for you."
"But you found me."
"It... doesn't mean anything."
Angel sipped his coffee and made no reply. An invisible iron hand gripped his heart and was slowly squeezing, as if it could somehow be made more lifeless. But he was already dead, and had been for some time. What difference could it make, in the end, if she got to know the details?
Fred insisted, "It doesn't. Not to me."
"You have no idea what you're talking about. The last time she was here, I almost went mad."
"Well," Fred said, "I - I know what that's like."
He watched her for a moment. She couldn't look at him, and the nervous, twitching movements, that he thought had gone for good, seemed to be returning. She ran a hand through her hair and got up as if to leave the room, and then sat down again, fidgeting. He cursed, inwardly, "You're frightening her now. Is that what you want?"
It took him two steps to get to her and no time at all to take her in his arms and steady her frame against him. "Fred... it's OK. I'm not angry. Well, not with you."
She heaved a heavy sigh and hid her face in his chest. Her voice came through, muffled and distraught. "I'm so sorry. You trusted me and I let you down. I shouldn't have tried to find out about Darla. I should have asked you first."
He smiled. "You did ask me. I couldn't tell you. I... I just wanted you to like me for as long as possible."
At that she moved her head from where it was buried and looked up at him. "I do. You're... the best friend I have. You saved me. I think I..."
Her speech faltered and she tried to pull away but he wouldn't let her. He bent down and dropped a gentle kiss on her mouth. "You...?"
Her eyes were closed. "Angel..."
He kissed her again and felt, to his surprise and relief, the sensation of her delicate, unsure, fingertips trace a pattern up his chest and reach to caress the skin at the back of his neck. She was shaking in his arms, but the kiss seemed to soothe her and as they coalesced into one another, he felt the tightening inside his chest melt away. If she could still want him, after what she must have been reading, there must be something here worth trying for. There must be some hope, for him.
Fred relaxed into his arms, and allowed his cool fingers wandering up and down her back to calm her. The kiss was so blissful, so considerate and undemanding, that she forgot to be nervous. She was hopelessly drawn to him, and at the same time in awe of him; she knew she had been tripping over furniture and dropping pencils in his presence for months. But this felt so right. Her natural shyness and awkwardness disappeared, and she reached up to stop him when he would have pulled away, wanting more of this magical and unexpected delight; more of his cool lips and gentle hands.
Eventually, they broke apart, and Angel planted a soft kiss on her forehead. "Better?"
"Hmmm... much better."
"Did you find anything useful?"
Fred pulled away and went back to the desk, and he followed her. "I was trying to figure out why Darla wanted to go back. Finding you was an accident. " She reached over and indicated the top of the page. "Look at the dates."
The tree did what family trees always do, that is, it narrowed towards the top as lines coalesced and branches of the family were swallowed by their parentage. Each name was annotated with a date in brackets. As Angel's eye travelled up the page, the names became unfamiliar to him, and eventually, they disappeared altogether. Blank spaces, with approximate dates, took the place of the certainties of later years, and the root of the tree itself was nameless.
"It's blank."
Fred nodded. "I checked the footnotes. The author left a blank space where he was sure a member of the order existed, but didn't know their identity. The name of the vampire who founded the order isn't known, but the approximate date of his turning is there. Do you see?"
"70 AD..."
"Angel, if the author was right, the Order of Aurelius was founded at the end of the Claudian dynasty. Darla may have been trying to contact the head of the family."
Soft noises in the lobby alerted them to Wesley's return. They rushed out, to find him trapped under a coffee table.
"Hey Wes, you need a hand?"
Angel lifted the table and Fred helped Wesley to his feet. He removed his glasses and spluttered, "Who put that there?"
"It's always been there, Wes. You came back in a slightly different location, that's all."
Fred smiled apologetically at him. "Portal travel... it's not a precise art."
"Well, I'll just be thankful I didn't arrive back under the photocopier, then."
Fred looked around the lobby. "It's getting fuzzy. Maybe we're going to lose it. Perhaps we should clear some more furniture for the next one?"
"Let's think about the next one after we've dealt with this one." Angel looked hopefully at Wesley. "Caligula? Big vampire goings on?"
Wesley shook his head. "No. Not exactly a natural death, but no vampires. I made sure of it. So, next up is Claudius. Big softie of the Claudian dynasty. Supposedly poisoned by his wife with a mushroom after a blameless life spent writing history and conquering Britain. Our road system would be nothing without him. Who's up for it?"
Angel nodded at Fred. "We may have a shortcut. Fred? Tell him."
They spent the next few hours talking about Darla and the Order. Gradually, Angel learnt to stop flinching every time her name was mentioned in front of Fred, and slowly, he began to contribute things to the conversation. Recollections he thought he'd put aside forever; facts he'd never wanted either of them to know.
As he bared more and still more of his fragile soul to both of them, Fred crept imperceptibly closer to him. Finally, as he described Darla's second turning for her benefit, Fred slipped into his arms and he sank his face into her neck.
Wesley came to a sudden decision. "Fred, I think you're probably right. We're short of time and we need to take a chance and move onto Nero. I'll catch up on my research and we'll reconvene here in... shall we say 3 hours time?"
No reply came, and Wesley noticed that Angel was kissing Fred's face, moving from chin to forehead, from cheek to cheek and back again. She was holding him gently and murmuring soft, comforting phrases. Wesley smiled indulgently, and said, under his breath, "I may as well be talking to myself, as usual!" Then he crept out quietly, and left them to each other's company.