Chapter 6: Revelations (over-used, I know.)
By: Hope
"Angel!" Spike yelled as his grand-sire pounced on him. Even with the weak condition that he was in, he was able to knock Spike down on the ground, careful not to knock him through the door, which would result in instant death for both of the vampires.
But after Angel had succeeded in knocking Spike onto the ground, he began to feel the weakness that had been building up inside of him from the lack of blood and he fell to his knees, unable to stand any longer.
Spike sat up and wiped the blood from his lips, rather than just licking it up like he would have once done. He stood up and took out a small packet of blood from the pocket of his jacket. He ripped it open with his teeth and while he was tempted to drink from it, he hadn't had anything to eat all night, he knew that Angel needed it more than he did.
Spike looked down on Angel, who was now laying on the floor, without even enough energy to stand on his own. Spike carefully lifted him, with little resistance which had shocked Spike. He leaned Angel against the wall of the old building so that he could sit up. Spike then stuck the open bag of blood in Angel's mouth, tipping it over so that the blood sunk in.
Tasting the blood, Angel already felt his strength begin to return and grabbed the bag out of Spike's hands, greedily drinking it all up. Even before he finished drinking the blood, he felt his strength slowly returning.
Throwing the bag to his side and shifting out of his game face, which he had slipped into while drinking the blood, Angel looked at Spike and realized that there was something different about him. He had taken him out of the water where Angel had been sure he would die, and now Spike was giving Angel blood to drink.
The two sat in silence, studying each other. Angel noticed that Spike seemed a little skinnier than he had been when they last met, his trademark leather jacket was gone and Angel could see Spike's dark roots in his hair.
Noticing that Angel was staring at his hair, Spike ran a hand through it and gave a weak smile. "Haven't really had time to keep up with it."
"What do you want?" Angel asked Spike. He certainly didn't look like he was there to start a fight but you never knew with the blond vampire.
"Well I origonally came here to talk to you, but then Cor- -" Spike saw Angel tense up. "I mean, I figured out that you were probably under the water, went to your rescue and here we are now." The vampire forced a smile, deciding that he would wait to tell Angel about Cordelia.
Angel looked like he was considering what Spike had just said but then nodded, buying the story. "Well we have a long time until sunset." Angel said. "What did you want to talk about?"
- - - - -
"So are you liking your stay in L.A. so far?" Lilah asked
Dawn, beginning to get impatient. The girl hadn't given her any useful
information since they had met and it was beginning to get on Lilah's nerves.
She was sure that Dawn was beginning to trust her, she had said and done the
right things, claimed to feel the same way as Dawn, with everything that Lilah
had done, she could have won a friggin oscar.
"Yea, its great." Dawn said without looking up from writing something in her notebook. Lilah hadn't had any cases that day, none that Dawn would have been able to witness without realized Lilah represented demons at least, so she was having Dawn just watch Court TV on her office television and take notes on it. Even though Dawn was writing notes on what was happening on the television in front of her, her mind kept drifting back to Stephen and Buffy, knowing that he had been asleep the whole night, not waking up at all, from what they knew at least. Buffy had literally forced Dawn to go to the internship thingy that day, having to pull her out of the hotel room and to the lobby until Dawn would go of her free will.
"Not a little...dull..." Lilah said, carefully picking her words. "Compared to Sunnydale is it?" She was hoping that Dawn would think that she was being sarcastic. Wolfram and Hart hadn't been able to get any information about the hellmouth other than the slayer still fought there and that they had recently faced a hell god and then one of their own, who had been a powerful witch. "No." Dawn replied instantly. Buffy had warned Dawn repeatdly over the past few days that she shouldn't mention anything about Sunnydale that was remotely abnormal.
Buffy had developed a theory that the people at Wolfram and Hart were actually the lawyers from social services and that they wanted to get any and all information out of Dawn that they could use to take her away from her sister. Dawn told Buffy that she had spent to much time thinking about it but it wouldn't calm her sister down. Dawn even considered telling Buffy the truth about why she was there.
Dawn hadn't exactly been chosen at random to do this. She had volunteered, almost begged her teacher even, to be given a chance to be able to make up all of the in-completes and failing grades that she had received that year and this was what the school came up with.
Dawn's thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of Lilah's phone. "Lilah Morgan." Lilah said as she picked up the phone, turning away from Dawn who looked curious to see who she was talking to.
"WILLIAM?!!?!" Lilah cursed. Dawn heard the name and was instantly alerted to listen.
Spike? she thought, now trying carefully to listen to Lilah's conversation.
"Fine. I'll be there in a few minutes." Lilah said quietly, realizing that she had been too loud when she had heard that William the bloody had been spotted and had rescued Angel.
Luckily, Dawn was able to turn her head back to the television and make it look like she wasn't paying attention to Lilah when she hung up the phone. She didn't know what would happen if she had known she was listening. Especially if it was Spike that she was talking about, how many people were there in the world that were named William... "I'm sorry Dawn." Lilah said tensely as she began putting some papers in her briefcase. "It seems that we'll have to cut this short today." She said. Instead of a smile or anything that Dawn had come to expect from Lilah when she would talk to her, Dawn got a cold stare.
"Ok." Dawn said, relieved that she would be able to go back to the hotel. She wanted to see what had happened with Stephen.
- - - - - -
"Yeah so I thought that he was a vampire but he moved so
fast! And his skills were unbelievable." Buffy said. She was on the phone with
Xander, filling him in on what had been happening and also asking if anything
had happened on the hellmouth since she had left.
"I believed you the first three times you told me Buff, so I'm pretty sure I believe you now." Xander said, smiling to himself.
Even with all of the terrible things that had happened to her, to all of them, over the past 6 years, deep down inside Buffy was still the same 16 year old girl that he had met. Their conversation had been going fine for almost 15 minutes now, Xander had counted.
They hadn't really been able to talk after Xander had found out what happened between Buffy and Spike and when they had forgiven eachother, Buffy and Tara had been shot, causing Willow to go all evil and end the world-y, not leaving Buffy and Xander much time to talk about anything that didn't have to do with those things. It was good to just talk.
Buffy felt the same way about that. For such a long time she and Xander hadn't been able to just talk, at first it was because of all the secrets that Buffy had been hiding from everyone, then it was because of the fact that the secrets were revealed. Just too many things had been going on since she had come back, that they didn't really have time to work on their friendship.
"...Have you heard from Giles?" And there it was, the question that neither of them had been wanting to hear.
"No..." Xander answered. They hadn't heard from Giles in over a week now and Xander didn't want to tell Buffy this, not wanting to spoil her vacation even more than it already had been, but Xander had tried calling Giles at the number he had left, multiple times, leaving messages. But he hadn't gotten any answers and he was beginning to become even more worried than he origonally was. "Well I've got to go." Xander said. Buffy heard a car honking in the background and assumed that it was Anya's.
"Ok." Buffy said, surprised and depressed by the news that Giles hadn't contacted anyone in Sunnydale since she had left. "Tell Anya 'Hi' for me." Buffy said, hearing a car honking in the background.
"I will." Xander said, "bye."
"Bye." They both hung up the phone, Xander grabbing his keys and walking out the door and Buffy turning around to face an awake and fully alert Stephen.
"Hi." Buffy said to the teenager. She took a step towards him and in response he jumped back to the end of the room, noticing that she was blocking the door. Buffy stopped and put her hands out in a sign of peace. "I'm not going to hurt you....anymore." Buffy added, realizing that his last memory was of her beating the shit out of him. "I thought you were a vampire." She said.
Connor searched the room with his eyes for any trace of Dawn. He was afraid that the girl would have been drained, or worse, turned into a monster. It was then that he noticed that all of the curtains for the windows were open, allowing sunlight to pour into every corner of the room, leaving no area of shade. It was also then when he heard what Dawn's sister had said. She had thought that he was a vampire. "You...know about vampires?" Connor asked, once again looking at Buffy, trying to see if he could find out if she was lying.
"Well its part of the job." She said, taking a step closer to Connor. Connor tensed up again but realized that she really wasn't going to hurt him, and if she was going to kill him, she would have done it while he was out. "I'm a vampire slayer." She said, looking at him like she expected him to know what one was. Buffy rolled her eyes. "Slayer, comma, the." She said, suddenly remembering that she had said the same thing to Riley three years ago. Connor still looked at her like she was mad, obviously never hearing of a vampire slayer before.
"She who slays vampires?" She asked, trying one more time to jog his memory of ever hearing about a slayer. "Ok." She said, giving up. "Into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires- -"
"My father hunted vampires." Connor said. Buffy looked at him, realizing the sad tone of his voice when he had mentioned his father.
"Did he?" Buffy asked, moving closer, trying to get through to him.
"A vampire, long time ago. He killed my father's family. He killed them all and left them there..." Tears began to form in Connors eyes as he spoke. "He left them there and arranged them in a horrible way...and he turned his daughter...he turned his little girl."
By the time Connor was done Buffy's eyes were left wide open. She hadn't known of any other vampires that would be sick enough to do that, or who would have the patience. "I refuse to believe that the beast that did that is my real father. He's a monster!! Angel is a monster!!!" Connor was now sitting on the bed and he began screaming and sobbing. Buffy sat down next to him and hugged him, trying to soothe him. So this is Connor? Buffy thought to herself as she tried her best to calm the boy down. "Its alright, its alright." Buffy told him.
Connor calmed down, stopped crying and pulled away from the comforting hug that Buffy had given him. He looked at her and wiped his tears off of his face with his left arm. She was so different than everyone else that he had met her so far, besides Dawn of course. It felt like she cared for him, even though she had no reason to. She was almost acting like something that Connor was sure he would never have.
A mother. But once he had thought it, the part of his mind that was convinced that the only person he could ever trust was dead began to turn. "Why do you act as though you care?" Connor asked.
Buffy took a moment to consider how she would answer him. It was obvious that he was in a fragile state, emotionally and she didn't know how many lies had been told to him, or what he could take. "Well you see, I have had, what you will call, as the worst year of my life." She gave him a weak smile. "I know what it feels like to be alone. You feel isolated, unwanted, and betrayed." Buffy said as memories of what had happened in the past year began to resurface in her mind.
"Sometimes it may seem that no one cares, and you...you might want to believe that what you were once told holds true." Buffy said, tears now forming in her eyes. "That evil can never love, and that you could never love it back....but..." Buffy looked back at Connor who seemed to be agreeing with every word that she was saying. "People do care, even those that are made out to be evil, or monsters." Buffy gave Connor another weak smile.
"Not all monsters...." Connor said, still unaware that she knew who he was.
"No, Connor, not all - -" Connor looked at Buffy and stood up, slowly backing away from her.
"You...you...you work for him." He said.
Buffy quickly stood up, making sure that she was blocking his path to the door. "No, Connor...Stephen, whatever the hell your name is!" Buffy shouted. "You're not the only one that he's hurt during his existence. And that wasn't him that did those things to Holtz. The thing that did that was a demon, a monster like you said. But it wasn't Angel."
Connor looked at Buffy, still considering his options. He wasn't sure if he could believe her but he also knew that he would never be able to make it to the door without her catching him. "Do you want to hear a story?" Buffy asked him. "The unabridged, full-fledged story of Angel and his past?"
"You'll just lie, make him look better." Connor said defiantly, now considering running for the door.
"No, I won't." Buffy said, noticing that he was looking to run out the door. Buffy stepped aside and sat on the bed, causing Connor to look at her, confused about what she had just done. "You're free to go if you want..." She said, looking at the door then back at the boy. "But this is probably the only chance you'll have to hear about his past, from someone other than him that is." Buffy said honestly.
Connor then began walking to the door and put his hand on the door knob like he was going to open it and leave. But then he turned around and looked at Buffy who was still sitting on the bed.
"Alright."