Living
Angel looked around the lobby of the Hyperion, it looked like a different place with the banners and brightly colored streamers Cordelia had hung up.
When Cordelia had told Angel they were going to celebrate Fred's birthday he'd been skeptical about the wisdom of the idea. Fred had never been a party-type and Pylea had made her even shier and more skittish. Since returning to LA she hadn't chosen to do much to reintegrate herself into her former life. In fact, without Cordelia's prodding she wouldn't have bothered to let anyone know she was back at all.
But Cordelia was determined and, as was usually the case when Cordelia decided something should be done, the rest of them had eventually gone along.
Angel had been given the task of keeping Fred away from the Hotel while the others decorated and gathered the guests, so the actual preparations were as much a surprise to him as they had been to Fred.
Surprisingly Cordelia had showed a remarkable degree of restraint in making up the guest list, just the four of them, Lorne, Fred's friends from the library and her graduate professor. All people she'd had contact with since returning from Pylea. Cordelia had reserved her normal over-the-top approach for the decorations. Angel couldn't even see the lobby's walls or ceiling for the rainbow colored streamers and banners hung from them.
And Fred did seem to be enjoying it. She and her Professor, the very Professor Lutzbalm who'd been laughed off the stage for proposing that dimensional portals may exist, were holding an animated discussion on dynamic reality spheres. They seemed very excited; no one else knew what they were talking about.
"Angel, tell him about the quaking and quivering, and how I opened them without even knowing," Fred demanded happily.
"You did, and fell in while monsters warriors and a psychic lounge singer fell out," Angel replied with gentle amusement.
"Right! Trionic speech formulations, that was the key. Talking to change what's real. Sound waves used to manipulate not just perception but everything. What the priests did with sound there, awful stuff, used it to blow heads off. But they didn't understand, called it magic, called it spells, nonsense, all sound waves and science. I heated the collar, put it out of tune, no blowin' my head off. Course then they wanted to cut it off, but Angel rescued me," Fred babbled excitedly. "Tone and tune and constant representation of mathematical formulation spoken out loud."
"Magic," Angel said seriously, although his eyes gleamed with amusement.
"Science, that hasn't been properly explained, yet," Fred responded automatically. "I'm going to do it, write a paper… or maybe not, don't need people here knowing new ways to blow things up, but I'll figure it all out."
"Spells, incantations, prayers to the gods." Angel's lips quirked.
"Verbal formulation," Fred insisted, knowing she was being teased.
"Sounds like magic to me," Angel replied, smiling.
"Superstitious, eighteenth century silly," Fred taunted.
"Twenty-first century sci-fi nut," Angel responded.
Fred giggled. "Wrong! Sci-fi means science fiction. I'm a bonafide scientific theorist."
Angel shrugged apologetically then in a too innocent voice said. "My mistake, but you have to admit it's a fine distinction."
"Oh you!" Fred huffed, playfully punching Angel in the shoulder.
Angel smirked at her good-humouredly. Fred pouted outrageously and Angel laughed. His laughter choked off in mid-sound. "I'm sorry," Angel said to Fred hurrying up, out of the lobby to his room.
Gunn followed him. "You forgot to be miserable long enough to laugh didn't you, and now
you're feeling guilty about that," he said confronting Angel. "Don't."
"I won't…" Angel began.
"No, you won't. You won't forget Buffy or betray her memory or anything else you're thinking you've done wrong because you're starting to live again… well not live per say, but you know what I mean," Gunn said. "It's been ten months, you can't mourn forever. Trying to hold on to that pain was what was killing you a few months back. You don't wanna go there again. Buffy wouldn't want you to either."
"How would you know what she would want?" Angel asked harshly. "You never even met her."
"Getting real tired of the misplaced anger route," Gunn said. "We aren't gonna let you push us away, so you might as well give it a rest."
"As for knowing what Buffy would of wanted; maybe I didn't know her, but I've heard the story, the message she had her sis pass on. Gist of it was she wanted the rest of you to go on with your lives. That was her last wish, and that's what you were doing a few minutes ago. So go back downstairs and keep it up. No more retreating up here and hiding from life, okay?"