Part Two

Marianne woke slowly to the sound of many machines humming, beeping and whirring. For a moment she felt disoriented. Like she didn't quite fit into her skin. She glanced at her hand wondering why she expected it to be the pale colour of a white person for a moment.

She frowned slightly wondering if maybe it was because she had some sort of amnesia. *My name is Marianne Harris, I'm 20 years old, the president is George W. Bush, and I'm a part Hispanic part white woman with dark brown eyes, black hair, and the only family I have is back in Sunnydale.* She thought over the information and decided that it was all correct.

*Then why does that sound so wrong?*

Before she could worry too much about why she felt way too tall, even lying down, a nurse came bustling in, "Oh good! You're awake! How do you feel, dear?"

"A little disoriented, but other than that, really, really, painful." Marianne responded with a wry chuckle.

The nurse frowned slightly as she looked at the chart at the bottom of her patient's bed. "You have enough painkillers in you to knock out a horse. I can't imagine why you would still be in pain," she said.

"I think I just metabolise 'em real fast," Marianne replied, "Could I get the elephant dose?"

The nurse just clucked at the young woman, fussed around with a couple of the machines, and checked on the IV needle. Then she left with a cheery admonition to rest.

Left alone with her thoughts again, Marianne realised with a start that she had yet to be concerned about his state of wellbeing. In fact, she had yet to even think about Jerry. She could summon a general concern for him that she would have for any person who was quite possibly on the verge of dying, but there were no personal feelings involved. It was almost as though the man she'd fallen in love with (she remembered loving him) that she'd been in a state of sheer and utter terror over in the car wreck (she remembered thinking her life would be over without him) suddenly meant nothing more to her than any other random guy on the street.

The more Marianne thought about it the more she was certain that at the time of the car crash she had been in love with Jerry's blonde hair, cheery disposition, and all-American boyish charms. Somehow, she had done the impossible. She had ceased to care in any way shape or form for a man she had been in love with.

The memories of the two of them in the sunshine, laughing, fighting, every memory Marianne had of him was coloured by an emotion she knew was love. True, deep, and mature love of two people finding their other half. This was love she had held for the man, but somehow, overnight it had been leeched away. The blonde hair and laughing eyes were attractive, but no more so than any other handsome man she would see on the street. The sunlight and the playfulness that characterised the relationship they had seemed almost wrong. Like there was supposed to be a completely different quality to their intimacy.

In the time she came to that realisation her mind decided she was too tired to handle any more and simply put her to sleep. And she dreamed.

There were people in the dream. A dark-skinned girl with a Jamaican accent, and another girl with a completely different attitude, pale skin and dark hair, who was a wild as the other was controlled. Somehow though, they were the same in some intangible way Marianne could only identify with instinctively. There were no words she could put to what made those girls the same.

There was also a man in that ethereal backdrop of gravestones and streets at night. Tall, strong, and handsome, she felt drawn to him with an intensity that surpassed even the love she had felt for Jerry. Or maybe that was the distance of memory already blurring the feelings she knew she had had for him.

"Custodio," the word whispered through her mind. "Angel custodio". A scent of freshly turned earth reached her nose. A scent so familiar she could even tell this was from a graveyard. Somehow. The voices whispered louder this time. "Tu angel custodio, Cazadora." they murmured.

"Who are you? What do you mean?" she demanded of the wisps of fog floating in the dreamscape.

"Usted sabe la respuesta," they breathed.

Then she woke up. *Angel custodio ... guardian angel? MY guardian angel?* she shook her head, baffled. *And why did they call me 'Cazadora'? I've never hunted anything in my life.* Then she chuckled, "Usted sabe la repuesta...Ha! That's a piece of pop psychobabble if I ever heard any!"

*****************

Angel paced beside Wesley while Cordelia, Gunn and Lorne watched the drama unfold. "Come on! There must be something in a book or scroll! Anything!" Angel snarled at the ex-watcher.

Wesley glared right back, "Angel, has it occurred to you that perhaps this dream of yours was nothing more than that? A dream?" He continued as Angel bridled at the words, "I know you want your soul to be bound, but I honestly do not see how you can leap to the conclusion that just because you had a dream that said so means that it IS so."

"You know," Cordelia began, but was interrupted by the two men.

"Be quiet Cordelia!"

Lorne leapt to her defence, "Just because the two of you are so busy being bullheaded about this is no reason to take it out on Cordelia," he said, "If you're that concerned why don't you try asking the Powers for some answers?"

Angel glared at The Host for several seconds before collapsing into the nearest chair. "The Oracles are dead. Otherwise I'd be there right now." He glanced at Wesley before saying defensively, "I've had enough abnormal dreams to tell those from the normal ones."

Wesley paused for a moment then reached for a notebook. Motioning to Angel he said in tones of deep resignation, "All right. If you insist on this madcap belief that this dream meant something tell me, in detail, what happened."

So Angel described the scenes from Sunnydale, seeing the three slayers, Kendra, Faith, and Buffy. The voices telling him he was Buffy's guardian, " And then they said, 'Tu anima estas ligado.' When I asked the voices what they wanted they said, 'Usted sabe la repuesta,' I don't know Spanish that well, but I know enough to translate that. 'Your soul is bound' and 'You know the answers'." Angel looked at the others expectantly.

Gunn raised a hand hesitantly, "Angel, man, you sure this ain't cause you're feelin' guilty about that Buffy chick dying?" He cocked his head to the side shooting the vampire a pointed look.

"It's true sugar," Lorne put in his two cents, "Your whole aura just screams massive emotional trauma. I wouldn't put it past that psyche of yours to invent a dream to make yourself feel better."

Angel was now floundering for some support for his dream being a message. He also crushed down his grief at Gunn's irreverence toward his ex-girlfriend (wife, lover). He sent a pleading look around the room his gaze finally landing on Cordelia. "I suppose you think I'm being hopeful too, don't you?" he asked her, also desperate for the distraction she could provide.

"Oh, now I'm allowed to speak!" she said, raising an elegant eyebrow sardonically.

"Alright, I'm sorry I told you to shut up before," Angel conceded, "What were you going to say?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes, and proceeded to explain at great length, with many critiques of the characters of everyone but herself, that if there was one link to the PTB there had to be others. Perhaps even those that were not quite so snotty as the Oracles had been. "Why don't you just look them up and then check?" she finished.

So the search began. While Angel manfully slipped away to his room to brood and weep in silence, Lorne begged off on the excuse that he had to start rebuilding Caritas, and the others entered into research mode. After hours of sifting through books, web sites, scrolls, and internet chats, an entry point down by the docks for a place called 'The Conduit' was discovered.

They drove down to the docks and the others watched as Angel performed the ritual to allow him to enter The Conduit. As he finished speaking the words a large hole appeared in front of him. They all stared at it for a moment before Angel stepped forward.

"Here goes nothing," he said. Then he just stepped over the edge and vanished.

***************

Marianne didn't have many friends. In point of fact, all the friends she had made in New York had been through Jerry. As the day passed she found that being alone in a hospital can be one of the most boring and creepy experiences of your life. Especially when there was no one there to ease the boredom or distract you from the aura of illness and death that always pervades a hospital.

She finally got up the courage to ask what had happened to her boyfriend when the nurse had come in and simply clucked at the chart before leaving for the umpteenth time. The woman had reached the door when Marianne asked "Jerry, my boyfriend, how is ... I mean... did he..." she trailed off uncertain of what the right question was to ask.

"I'm so sorry!" the nurse cried. Beth, Marianne noticed her nametag said, "I thought... I mean, didn't your friends tell you?" When she shook her head 'no', Beth seemed to steel herself then said softly, "He's dead. I'm sorry."

She froze as the other woman's words and all their repercussions worked their way slowly through her mind. Beth made a strategic exit as Marianne tried to rebuild her world around those words. That really explained a lot of things. All of her friends were Jerry's friends first. She would be secondary in their concerns. She'd always been 'Jerry's girlfriend' to them. He'd been the only person around who had seen her as Marianne and not a long series of descriptives connecting her to one group or another.

Actually that wasn't true. His parents had always disliked her for being Hispanic She still remembered with painful clarity the day that Jerry had renounced his parents' fortune for her because his parents refused to speak of her as anything other than "a half-breed of a half-breed." They'd probably convinced his friends that she was the devil incarnate the moment they received the news of his death.

Being suddenly so utterly alone wasn't the only thing that was bothering her though. She was again struck by her singular lack of feeling toward his death. She was sorry he was dead, certainly, but for some bizarre reason the only feelings she could summon were those one would have at the death of an acquaintance. Someone you knew of, and had met personally, but nothing at all like the all consuming passion she'd had just three days before, on the day of the accident.

Then there were the burgeoning feelings for the man in her dream that she knew hated yogurt, listened to Barry Manilow, and practised T'ai Chi. That he had dark eyes, though she hadn't been close enough in her dream to tell, and had a tattoo of a gryphon on his shoulder. The dream was quite baffling and Marianne was certain that it wasn't normal to develop feelings for an imaginary person who liked Manilow (Then again she wasn't certain liking Manilow was all that healthy either).

The last thing that had her confused was this feeling of certainty that she still had friends. She did have family, it was true. She was the bastard daughter of Rory Harris. That lot of rednecks had never liked her. They were why she'd left Sunnydale vowing to never return. She also remembered her cousin Alexander who had seemed to be the only decent one of the lot. Now that she thought of it, they had never gotten along because she had always found him to be a touch too careless and generally idiotic for her tastes.

The more she thought of him now, he seemed to be a really nice guy she'd never given half a chance. He had always been sweet to her, he had even given up his sleeping bag one Christmas when they were in the back yard avoiding the drunken melee that was a Harris Christmas, so she wouldn't be cold.

It was on that note she fell asleep and dreamed again.

*******************

Angel dropped into a circular cavern with a small fire burning in the centre on a raised circular stone platform. He glanced around briefly, then shouted, "Hello! I wish to speak with The Conduit!"

"We are The Conduit," came the response, echoing around the small chamber. It was as though hundreds of voices, male, female, demonic, friendly, unfriendly, familiar, and unfamiliar spoke in unison, "What does it want?"

"I want answers about my dream!" Angel demanded. He paced around the cavern looking like nothing so much as a caged panther. His coat billowing behind him and a dark scowl on his face, Angel seemed to epitomise his image as the Dark Avenger.

"It does not understand. There can be no answers but those which are of itself." This merely irritated Angel who disliked ambiguity in information.

"I want to know whether my soul is bound or not, and I want to know why." He was so sick of cryptic messages from the PTB and cryptic messages from the Oracles, and cryptic messages from Lorne, and the goddamn cryptic messages from Whistler that had started the whole mess. The irony of a master of the cryptic message wanting to be told straight up what the issue was never occurred to him.

"Its guardianship is required and cannot be put at risk. The answers it seeks must be read from the soul itself. It has no purpose here. It will leave. Now."

With those words Angel was ejected from the small cave and found himself back on the docks with the others. "Well?" asked Cordelia when he just stared dumbly at the spot where the opening had been.

"Not a single straight answer." he replied. Then he kicked the wall next to him.

*****************

Marianne found herself in a badly cut horror movie. She would be in one scene then, just as she was understanding the action as it took place around her, the whole would switch. There were vampires, demons, giant bugs, and so much death. It didn't make sense because she really hated horror movies, and moreover she didn't think her imagination was up to the task of creating that many monsters.

There were some things she had figured out though. For one thing, her cousin Xander seemed to have one of the lead roles. His friend Willow, and their girlfriends had others. There was an older man she didn't recognise who spoke with an English accent, and a young girl with long hair who didn't seem quite real. There was another Brit in the dreams who was dressed like a punk rocker, a woman with curly hair that Marianne kept calling 'Mom', and a cast of others that appeared endless.

There was one figure that stood amidst the others. Every scene had something to do with him. He was there, they were talking about him, she was doing something for him, or something because of him. The voices from the last dream whispered again, "Angel custodio, Cazadora."

"Why do you keep calling me Cazadora? I'm not a huntress," she called out, "In point of fact, why do you keep speaking to me in Spanish? Do I have to ask in Spanish? Yo exijo las respuestas! I want answers!"

The voices overlaid the scenes of the handsome man Marianne had fallen in love with. They spoke of a guardian angel, and of the 'Huntress' they believed her to be. Finally Marianne gave in to the insistence that she already knew the answers, and asked, "How do I find the damned answers?!"

Four words they whispered to her, "Hoya de la sol." Dale of the Sun. Sunnydale.