Disclaimer: They belong to the WB etc.

Summary: Installment no. 7. Okay, Kathy and Cordelia both wake up and respond to their surroundings

Lorne is still in Vegas, Connor has learned the truth, and Angel and Wesley have started to patch things up. To learn more, read the damn story. Enjoy!








Chapter 11

Galway, 1753

Father Jack Baker gazed down at his new charge wondering what in God's name he was to do with her.

He lived in a modest house behind the church with one room for himself, and one for a guest.

Right now his house was being guarded by at least twenty righteous men wielding shovels, mallets, and in one case a musket.

They were standing watch for two reasons. The first being to prevent the strange girl from leaving the house if she happened to wake, the second being to prevent the growing crowd of hysterical townspeople from entering the house and doing violence to the "demon girl". The disappearance of the silk merchant's daughter had everyone scared.

The woman was in the guest room. She had been layed out carefully on the bed. One hand chained to the bedpost.

She had been cleaned up, dressed in a nightrobe (her own clothes were tattered), and had remained unconscious throughout the entire ordeal.

She looked peaceful.

Father Baker had discovered that despite the scratches and burns, she was in fact beautiful. Tall and slim, with exotically tanned skin and full lips.

Her hair was unusual. Short and blond. Obviously not its natural colour, and apparently cut that way intentionally.

He wondered what she would say when she woke.

He wondered what he would say.

Many of those who had been in attendance at the service that morning were clamoring to have her executed.

Jack Baker was uncertain.

That the terrifying portal which had opened within the church had been evil he had no doubt.

It had taken the life of an innocent child, who's family were being consoled that very moment in the next room.

But there was something about the girl that made him believe she was innocent.

Someone had been sent to find the missing girl's older brother who apparently did not make a habit of attending church services. Baker knew the rest of the family by sight, but the eldest son was known to him only by reputation. A troublemaker by all accounts. Baker wondered how he would respond to the news.

Would he believe it?

Baker wasn't sure he believed it himself.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again at the girl.

She did not look evil. But of course appearances were no way to judge.

Still, he instinctively believed her to be a victim of the whole ordeal, not the instigator.

He would have to wait until she woke to make that decision with any surety.

Her eyes were twitching.

Baker stiffened.

"Child?" he said softly.

The eyes snapped open. Large and brown. The wandered for a moment, then fixed on Baker and narrowed. He felt like a rabbit being sighted down the shaft of an arrow, despite the fact that she was on the bed and he was standing over her. Her gaze was intense. He fidgeted.

She tried to sit up, then groaned in pain and thought better of it. Instead she tugged on the wrist that was chained to the bed.

"You're awake," Baker stated in an obvious way.

"No kidding," she said in an odd accent that Baker couldn't place. He fell silent.

She looked around the room, then fixed her eyes back on Baker, then on the nightdress he had lent to her.

She seemed to be trying to piece a puzzle together. Twisting her head around to get the full impact of the room around her.

But for the bed and a small bookcase, it was bare.

She used her free hand to grip the fabric of the nightdress.

"What am I wearing?" she asked finally.

"It's one of mine. I'm afraid your own clothes are not terribly wearable at this point. I'm not certain they'd've been considered appropriate even if they were."

"My clothes weren't appropriate?" she asked in a dangerous tone.

"Well, I . . . . .I don't . . . . . .I, I, I, don't,"

"Oh save it!" she cut him off.

She took one more look around the room, then began to talk, apparently to herself.

"Okay Cor. You're obviously not up with higher beings. Something went wrong."

She turned back to Baker who was becoming very confused with the girl's manner and odd phrases. She did not behave like the wounded and imprisoned young woman she was. Rather, she behaved as if she had power here, and Baker's presence was inconsequential.

"Okay mister guy in black robe, where am I? How did I get here? And do they treat human beings like cows in this reality?" she demanded.

"Human's as cows?" Baker asked in surprise. Who was this strange woman?

"Where am I?" she demanded again. This time Baker thought he heard a note of building fear in her voice.

Her gaze was like a hawk's.

"You're safe for now," he said trying to reassure her, "You're in my guest room. Behind the church."

"Church, what church?" she asked, her tone making it clear that his attempt at reassurance had been unsuccessful. Her brave facade was melting away. She tugged at the manacle that bound her wrist.

"St Peter's." he replied.

She gazed into the air as she took this in.

"So I'm still on earth," she said quietly, "and you're a priest?"

He nodded.

"So why have you chained me to a bed?! And where is this church? I'm I still in L.A?"

"You're in Galway Miss."

"Cordelia. You can call me Cordelia."

"Very well, Cordelia. I am Father Baker and. . . . ."

"Where's Galway?"

"You mean what nation do you? It's in Ireland of course."

"I'm in Ireland?!"

She tugged on the chain again, sitting up in the bed and trying to stand

"Yes," said Baker faintly, taking an instinctive step back from his determined guest.

"You have to let me out of here!" she cried. "I have to get back to America! To my friends! Or at least to a phone so that they can send me the money for a plane ride home!"

"Phone? I don't understand,"

She stopped pulling at her wrist and looked at Baker as if he were a fool.

"A telephone. You know. You talk into it? It goes 'bring bring.'"

Baker felt bewildered.

He also looked bewildered.

He heard footsteps approaching rapidly.

Both he and Cordelia turned to the door and waited apprehensively for the door to open.

Jim burst into the room, took one look at Cordelia and advanced on her like a fox might advance on a chicken.

"What have you done with my daughter?!" he demanded in a combination of grief and rage.

Baker realized that the merchant must have heard the girls voice and known she was awake. It was the sort of voice that reverberated through a house. He hoped the people outside had not heard. He wasn't prepared for a riot.

Cordelia just gaped at Jim, taking in the stylish silk clothing and neatly tied hair.

"What year is it?" she asked weakly.

"Where's Kathy?!" Jim demanded again, but louder this time.

"Who the hell is Kathy?!" Cordelia screamed back at him. Tears of fear were forming in her eyes.

Jim moved to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. As his fingers gripped her flesh she cried out in pain and used what looked like a wrestler's move to shove him away.
Having seen the girl naked not one hour earlier, Baker was aware that Jim had just dug his fingers into nasty looking gashes, hidden by the nightshirt.

Jim hit a bookshelf and stumbled to the floor. Shock marked his features.

Baker suspected he was as surprised at his own behavior as much as he was at the girl's. Jim was not of the sort to tend toward violence against a woman. His grief was making him act out of character.

Meanwhile, having just been attacked, Cordelia was tugging even more desperately at the chain.

"Let me out!!" she screamed hysterically.

Baker had been watching the whole scene in stunned silence. All of this was outside his experience. Hellish portals, missing daughters, strange young women.

He was expected to be the religious leader of the town. To offer guidance. Unfortunately his youth and inexperience made him uncertain.

But something had to be done.

Feeling uncomfortably like a villain leaving a damsel to suffer alone, Baker went to Jim, picked the large man up from the floor, and steered him from the room, closing the door behind him.

Cordelia's cries could still be heard through the thin wood. "Let ME OUT!!"

"This is the business of the church!" Baker said firmly. "Now I'll be doin' everything in my power to find your daughter, but you must leave the girl to me!"

Jim's anger did not fade, Baker could sense that, abd see it in the steely grey eyes, but to the man's credit he did try to mask it.

Jim was a man who would respect the church and it's representatives on principal, despite the fact that the priest was no older than his own son.

"Please find her," he said in a low voice.

"I'll do my best," Baker responded, in a tone that he hoped would inspire confidence. "You should attend to your wife and your eldest now. They'll be needin' your support."

"My eldest," spat Jim derisively.

"He'll be grievin' too. He'll need you."

Jim grunted, then slowly walked back to his wife who had been led to a low cushioned chair by the fireplace and given a steaming cup of tea.

Anna had been sent to find Liam.


L.A 2002

Connor reached out and stroked the girl's cheek.

As a child he'd had no friends, and since coming to live in L.A he'd spent most of his time trapped in the Hyperion, so his experience with children was limited.

He felt drawn to this one.

He couldn't have explained why.

She was beautiful, despite the angry red scratches and many bandages. Watching over her gave him a warm protective feeling.

He wondered if this was what how his father had felt about him when he was a baby.

Fred had shown him a photo once. It had depicted the vampire sitting comfortably in a couch, holding a bundle of blankets. He had not been smiling. Just gazing down at the bundle. The way Connor was now gazing at the tiny child on the bed. Was this how Angel had felt? Was this why he had been so insistent that Connor come to live with him?

They'd picked an empty room for the girl. The one next to Connor's. And after tending to the burns and scratches she had received in the hellish temporal fold tunnel, Fred had dressed her in a big floppy T-shirt that would hang to the girls knees if she woke up and started to walk around.

Connor hoped she would wake.

They had not taken her to the hospital because they had seen that the wounds were all basically superficial, and that a trip to the hospital would raise more questions than it was worth.

Even so, the girl was so still that Connor worried.

But he needn't have.

The girl stirred, then settled.

He relaxed a little, and resisted the urge to shake her until she woke. He wanted to see her awake and smiling.

His keen hearing picked up the sound of a turning page.

Wesley was in the lobby with his books, attempting to find out what Sahjahn had done to the portal.

The tutor had studied the girl's clothing and ascertained that the child had been brought forward in time from the 1700's. But that did not explain what had happened to Angel.

Connor was dealing with his father's disappearance by convincing himself that the vampire would return. There were no other possibilities. Angel would return. He had returned from the depths of the ocean. He would survive this.

Connor knew that he would break somehow if he lost a second father.

Maybe he would become a superstrong madman, killing randomly and howling at the moon.

It was a horrifying thought that had entered his head for a moment.

Angel had to return.

Connor watched over the child.

Another page turned downstairs.

Gunn was pacing.

Connor couldn't hear what Fred was doing.

Anya had gone back to Sunnydale, saying that there were books there on portals and temporal folds there that might be useful. She'd also hinted that she might teleport to England to ask for Giles' advice on the matter. Wesley had been in support of that idea. Apparently Wesley and Giles and acquired their research skills at the same institution.

As the person with the least research skills, Connor had been asked to watch over the girl.

He'd taken the task very seriously, making sure that he had a glass of water, two pain killers, a couple of wrapped pieces of chocolate cake, and a twinkie on hand in case she woke up and needed something.

He realized her eyes were open.

Big brown eyes that looked oddly familiar.

How long had she been watching him?

His first reaction was to panic. How did you talk to children? Would she be afraid of him?

"Hello," he said quietly.

"Hello," she repeated in much the same tone. Suddenly she appeared to be very much afraid of him. "Is this hell?" she asked.

"No!" he said.

"I'm not dead?"

"No."

She appeared to accept this on face value. Connor decided he liked the way her words lilted. He smiled.

"You're safe here," he told her. "You're lost. But we're trying to find out how to send you home."

"Where are we?" she asked with wide eyes.

"This is my home." Said Connor. And to his surprise the words felt true. This was his home. And that was his family downstairs.

"What's your name?" he asked the girl.

"Katherine. And your's sir?"

She was polite. He'd never been called "sir" before. He liked it.

"Connor."

"Your words sound strange Connor."

"No. Your words sound strange. Like you're trying to sing."

They laughed together at that. Then her face contorted with pain.

"I hurt too much to sing."

Concerned, Connor reached for the pain killers. Katherine saw what he was doing and reached out too. Only her little fingers closed around one of the cake slices, rather thean the little pills.

"Is this mine?" she asked.

"Yes" he replied.

"You have the other one." she said graciously.

"Okay," he said, feeling strange.

"You will tell my father that I'm safe?" she asked as she swallowed the first bite.

Connor didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know if they would ever even find her father.

"We will when we find him," he answered.

"He was at church when I saw him last," she supplied helpfully.

Connor could only nod.

She studied her arm, and felt the bandages that covered her torso under the T-shirt.

"Am I horribly covered in scratches then?" she asked in a small voice.

Connor nodded tactlessly.

She looked at him in fear as she took another bite of the cake.

"You'll heal." He said softly. "Just rest. I've been scratched much worse by demons. You'll heal soon. Everything will be alright."

He tentatively reached out to stroke her cheek. She seemed to calm down, fear giving way to curiosity.

"You've fought demons then? Have you had great adventures? My brother tells me tales of adventures. Pirates and monsters and fairies."

"I've never met a pirate," said Connor. He didn't know what else to say. He could think of nothing in his life that would entertain this girl. The only stories he could think of involved bloodshed and sadness. His life was depressing. He felt boring.

"Oh." She said, disappointed.

He frowned.

"Sleep," he said. "I'll try to find your father."

She nodded.

"I wish I could find mine," he muttered as he left her to sleep.

TBC

Don't worry Angel isn't gone for good.

Thanks for the reviews!!!! Once again, keep em comin'!

Coming up:

Liam finds out what happened to Kathy.

W&H become very interested in the odd little girl staying at the Hyperion.

Stay tuned!!