Author: Hope
E-mail: xForgottenTearsx@aol.com
Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/delusional_youth
Rated: PG - 13
Disclaimer: I made up my own character! Finally! I am oh so proud!! (Shane!!!) But everyone else belongs to the wonderful mind of Joss Whedon (and Mutant Enemy)
Description: Dawn and Buffy go to L.A. and it must be tuesday 'cause it seems Dawn's in trouble, again. This is a Dawn/Connor story and I know that there hasn't been to much between them yet, what with the kidnapping and all, but there will be, soon :) This is also an S/B story, A/X and F/G :)
Author's Note: Sorry for such the long wait for a chapter and if you haven't notices this is just an extended version of the previous chapter, with a new part added at the end. I was very disapointed with how the last chapter had come out and I apologize about how rushed everything was, I plan to keep it the same but smoother (that make sense?) And I promise promise promise I'll update faster! But you see...for the last two weeks I've been plotting/writing the ending for this beloved story of mine :-D! I really hope It'll turn out good since this will be the first story i've actually finished (go me)I would also like to say that I will, to a certain extent be following season 7 (you'll see what I mean)
Flashes. Thoughts. Memories raced through his head, pounding. Pounding away at it like a drum, a terrible drum that beat against his brain, sending him into convulsions. Didn't know what to think. Didn't know where he was. Mother. Mother needed him. He had to get back from the party. Yes, the party. He must have passed out at the party...
Attempting to get up, his head hit a soft coushin above him. He tried opening his eyes, but a terrible pain shot through his entire body. What had happened to him? Why was he there? What had happened to the party..? So many questions filled his head. Too much thinking, his own thoughts began to make his already pounding head's headache elevate into an even worse one. He was always thinking, his mother had said that it would be the end of him. He was so unlike his father, who he had been told was a great war hero. He was the disgrace of the family thinking when he should act, writing when he should speak. He wrote meaningless poetry when he should have been trying to impress Ceci--Cecily. She had rejected him and he had run out of the party into the streets, running into a group of three people that he hadn't recognized. One of them followed him down the alley that led to his home. He did not like taking the main roads, he hated the interaction with the nobles who would just laugh at him. Laugh at the sad image William had become. It hadn't been a good idea to go down the alley that night, though. But he had no other choice, sitting down upon a stack of hay, William once again saw her. The woman came up to him and read his mind. She told him that he was meant for great things, that he saw things that no other could even imagine. And then...
Stupid, ignorant as always he had listened to her, he had...thats when he noticed that he wasn't breathing. He didn't hear his heart beating. He felt no pulse. Forcing his eyes to open, William let out a loud cry, realizing where he must be.
He was dead and in purgatory. Buried six feet underground in a wooden coffin. A sudden feeling that everything was closing in around him overcame William, and he struggled to get his arms up, to break free, through his coffin.
Clawing his way through the dirt, gasping for the air that he no longer needed, William finally found himself free of the coffin. He climbed up out of the hole that he had just dug, staring back down at it in disbelief.
"My sweet William." He looked up in front of him and saw the woman that he believed had done this to him. She stood there, her hands clasped together, smiling like a child that had just been given a present. To his surprise, William was not frightened of her.
Slowly lifting himself up, brushing the dirt off of his suit, William looked at the woman who was almost squealing with delight. "My prince has come." She smiled again, turning her head to her left for a moment, looking to the shadows for permission to come closer to William.
Stepping out from the shadows was the man that William had run into that night...was it that night still? How much time had passed? How long was he gone. The man nodded at the dark-haired woman and she smiled, turning back to William. She took a step towards him and put her hand up to his heart, once again, to his surprise he did not step back in fear, but embraced her touch.
"Welcome my William, welcome to our family."
- - - - -
"One must survive the coming darkness, the apocalyptic battles, a plague brought on by the fiends of hell and once that has been done, the vampire--" Westley stopped midsentence, staring at the ancient text. Unable to believe his error in the translation. When he first translated the text, he had told Angel that it had been very hard for him, cross referencing one dead language with another and that he wasn't even sure if he had gotten it right. And now he knew that he hadn't gotten it right.
He had only gotten a few words at the end of the prophecy wrong, but those words held the whole purpose or meaning of the text. "And once that has been done, the vampires with souls will no longer be of the undead, but of the living." He finished reading to himself, not believing the discovery that he had just made.
Running out of things to do, Westley had spent the past week reading over all of his texts, looking for anything that might prepare him for what would come next. Without working at Angel Investigations, Westley had hardly anything to do anymore. The most that he had done for them since what Angel thought of as Westley's betrayal, was help Gunn save Fred. When Gunn had first shown up at Westley's apartment that night, Westley had still been full of hope that he would be able to once again join the Fang Gang, ready to open the door and greet Gunn like a friend was when he had come to his senses again.
They hated him. Cordelia. Angel. Gunn. Fred...they all hated Westley. In fact, the only one that had ever listened to his side of the story was Fred and he was sure that she hated him now as well. The only person he had, as much as he hated to admit it, was the one woman that he hated above all others.
Picking up the phone, Westley quickly dialed a number that he was now often using. "Hello, may I speak with Lilah Morgan?" The englishman asked over the phone. It had been only hours since he had last called her, telling her that Drusilla and Spike had been spotted back in town and now he wanted to see if he would be able to get anything out of her about the shanshu. Something maybe that he didn't know about.
"I'm sorry, she's not in at the moment." The clerk answered.
"Hi." A voice said in the background. Westley listened closely, almost instantly recognizing the voice.
"Excuse me sir, hold on a moment." She lazily replied. "How may I help--?" The clerk obviously asked the girl that had just come up to the counter, looking at her the first time. Stopping mid-sentence, Westley could already picture in his mind what was going on.
"I'd like to know where Drusilla is." Buffy asked the woman in her sweetest tone, obviously holding a weapon to the poor girl's head. With that, Westley could hear the girl drop the phone on the ground.
Slamming the phone down on the receiver as fast as he could, Westley grabbed his coat, shoving the shanshu papers that he had been working on into his pocket and walking out the door to Wolfram and Hart.
- - - - -
Connor watched everyone on the way to Wolfram and Hart. He had decided to go in the same car as Buffy and her two friends from Sunnydale. He had known the Fang Gang longer but Lorne had an obvious dislike for the boy and Connor felt safer, no, not safer, more secure around Buffy. Was there even a difference? From what he had been told recently, Angel would use all of his power to make Connor safe, that he had even warded off hundreds of demons from him when he was a baby. But when it came to Angel, he didn't know what to really think. He had also been told that Holtz, his father would take care of him, and make him safe for the rest of his life, that was a lie also though, wasn't it? It was so hard to tell the truth from the endless mass of lies that he had been fed over the years. Even if he didn't know what to believe in anymore, he still believed Buffy. There was just something about her that seemed different than everyone else he had met her. Justine had been nice to him, she had given him shelter and food for the past few weeks but she seemed like she was watching him as much as she was caring for him. She seemed like she was hiding something and Connor believed that Buffy and Dawn weren't hiding anything. Maybe that was the difference?
Holtz had spent Connor's whole life telling him stories about the terrible things that Angelus had done. The things that he had done to Holtz's family, and the families of many other people. He had also been told a countless amount of stories about earth, about how beautiful it is, how bright. But, now that he was back in the dimension he belonged in, one that was full of beautiful things, he wasn't sure if it was just as depressing as the dimension he had grown up in, or even worse.
"Wolfram and Hart." Xander read, pointing to the sign in front of the large building to their right.
"Okay." Buffy said, picking up a bag of weapons, arming herself with a crossbow. "Lets do this."
- - - - -
"Why do you yearn so much to go back?" A voice asked,
observing how the new power was standing against the railing of the long
balcony, trying to look down on earth.
"Because that's where I'm from!" Cordelia yelled, putting her hands up in frustration.
She had been able to get together enough magical power, along with a favor from Skip who decided he felt pity for the young woman. Was she even considered a woman anymore? Yea, she was still female but she wasn't human. Ignoring the prescense of the other being, Cordelia looked down at herself.
She had spent a day trying to figure out how to assume a human form, and after all of her hard work, she still didn't have the kinks out of it yet. For one thing, she was glowing. She was glowing, really bright. Also, after a day had gone by in the form, she started becoming lighter and more transparent. She was afraid that after a while she wouldn't look at all like the way she used to. She couldn't even describe what the other beings there looked like. They would talk to her from time to time, each wondering why she wanted to go back to earth so much. But they really had no form. All they were were big balls of energy and light, a wierd greenish light.
Focusing her attention back on earth, she saw Drusilla take Dawn. She saw Buffy find out, going to the Fang Gang and seeing Spike again for the first time. Cordelia was surprised how everything had happened so quickly. Time probably moved different up here...wherever here was at least. The people here thought of the human dimension as a weak and useless one, they didn't see the point in it. They didn't see the point of love, why it meant so much to humans. Nor did they see the point of living at all if you weren't some big ball of energy. But while looking down at her friends, Cordlia also saw Angel, wanting to go reach out to Connor, to tell him that everything was okay, that he forgave him. But he was too afraid. He didn't want to lose his son forever. In a lot of ways, it really was harder. Human life, un-human life, whatever it was. There were so many thing that you had to go through during your short life span, there was so much hate, so much pain. It was so easy for people to give up, the people that forgot how great the prize was at least. How great the feeling of having someone that you love love you back was. It was worth it, these key people didn't have any idea what they were talking about.
Cordelia cared for angel. She even considered herself as loving him. But now seeing what had been happening...seeing Buffy and Angel's whole relationship from the beginning, what was happening now, feeling what they were feeling, thinking what they were thinking, she just wasn't sure. Angel still loved Buffy. Buffy still loved Angel. But now it wasn't clear what that love was.
Spike had changed his entire existence for Buffy. He had gone from being a demon, one of the scourges of europe, to a vampire with a soul seeking redemption. The most interesting part of all of it was that he had chosen to get his soul, he had even fought for it. Knowing that the woman he loved might even hate him for the rest of her life, he was still willing to go through all the pain...
Only here for a few weeks, and already they had her doubting herself. "Just stop thinking, Cordy." She said to herself. She had been talking to herelf aloud lately. Call it a habit of being human. The people there had found it a bit strange at first, not recognizing that she was simply speaking to herself and not adressing anyone else.
Her thoughts were interrupted when her eyes drifted to another few moments in the future...for them still on 'earth' that is. What she saw was Drusilla sitting at a large dining table, her dolls on top of the table, all lined up neatly. But sitting across from her at the table was a teenage girl, her mouth gagged and her hands tied to the chair. "Dawn?" She asked, once again talking to herself aloud.
She knew Dawn, Dawn was Buffy's sister. She had always known Dawn. Dawn was just another normal girl. Well if that was true, why did she look exactly like all the jackasses that Cordelia had been meeting in her new dimension?
"Cordelia?" Cordelia took her eyes off of Dawn, closing the cloud that she had been looking at them.
"Yea?" She asked, turning around to see another one of the light objects approach her, its hands folded in front of it.
She seemed to have her own problems going on up here. Earth would have to wait.
- - - - -
"Hi." Buffy said, trying to get the clerk's attention. She
was on the phone with someone, her boyfriend probably. Or maybe her family. Her
mother? Her sister? Putting herself in an even worse mood with her thoughts,
Buffy began to tap her fingers on the desk, the way customers did it at the
Double Meat just to piss her off.
"Excuse me sir, hold on a moment." The woman said into the phone as she looked up to see the large group of people that were standing in front of the desk. "How may I help--" She stopped, noticing the relatively large crossbow aimed at her head.
"Yes, I'd like to know where Drusilla is." Buffy asked the woman, still trying to sound as innocent as possible while holding a weapon to someone's head. Looking at the group in front of her, the woman carefully moved her eyes to where the security guards should be standing. But it seemed that both the security cameras and the guards had already been taken out by the new visitors.
The camera's were ripped in half, some still sparking sparking, almost looking like they were going to light on fire. The security guards were sprawled around the entire main lobby, each knocked unconscious or worse. Her mouth open in fright, the woman dropped the phone in her hand onto the ground.
"Now would be nice." Buffy added, bringing the crossbow closer to the woman's face.
The woman was surprised that she hadn't heard them come in at first. But then again, this was the - "Slayer..." She hissed, changing into her vampire visage. "Oh, so you already know me? Thats real good." Buffy smiled not even blinking at the transformation of what looked like a niave clerk to a taunting vampire, while bringing the crossbow even closer to the woman's face than before. "That means that we can skip introductions then. Bring me to her." She said, her voice growing stern.
Getting up from her desk, while trying as hard as she could to ignore the crossbow that was now aimed at her heart, the vampire led the slayer and her companions to where Drusilla was. "Xander, Anya." Buffy said, motioning for them to stay in the lobby.
"We'll stay too." Fred, Lorne and Gunn offered, holding their weapons up and joining the other two in front of the desk.
"Whats the plan?" Angel asked, now walking beside Buffy.
"I am the plan." She answered, keeping the crossbow aimed at the vampire that was leading them to what Buffy hoped was Drusilla.
"Oh so the usual then?" Angel smiled, memories of Sunnydale flooding through his head.
Walking directly behind them were Connor and Spike, carrying equally large axes. Spike couldn't help but to also smile at Buffy's comment. Even to this day, her determination stunned Spike. He had never met a single person like her before in his life, or un-life.
Maybe thats why he loved her so much?
- - - - -
Two months earlier...
Humming away in her
ears, whispering their little secrets over and over, softer and softer than
before, the faeries awoke her. She now lay awake in her bed, lying between the
silk sheets and the smooth comforter that covered her cold body. It must have
been at least noon, but she couldn't tell, nor did she care. Dark curtains
covered the large windows, blocking all sunlight from making its way into her
new home.
Drusilla had never been one to get followers of her own, but when she had run into more vampires in New Mexico, they began to follow her around. They believed that she was a leader, one that they could count on, someone that would help guide them to live over a hundred years. It seemed now that if you were a vampire over 100 years old, you were considered a god among the new fledglings who knew nothing of how to live as a vampire. It seems that vampires had become the rats of the underworld in the last century. The demons blamed them for the slayer. They blamed them for Buffy Summers.
Beginning to once again grow louder, Drusilla picked up on the conversation that the two faeries had been having. When she was still mortal, long before she began to call herself Drusilla, the faeries would speak to her often. They would tell her marvelous stories of heroes, of lands far away. But after Angelus had turned her, after all of her family had been tortured and killed, the faeries no longer liked Drusilla.
Miss Edith had been a very bad girl since it had happened. She refused to tell Drusilla what she wanted to know, she was keeping secrets from the vampiress, but it seemed that now she didn't know that she was listening. They often didn't know that she was listening, to wrapped up in thair own affairs that they didn't pay attention to the vampire. They hated her yet they were bound to her. They held all the secrets of the world, yet Drusilla was only able to hear a few.
Singing in riddles, the rhymes that they loved to chant over and over, humming in her head like little bluebirds. Drusilla liked blue birds. She always had. "Right from the beginning..."
The vampire got up from her bed, lazily throwing the comforter to the side, now covering the face of the vampire that she had let spend the night with her in her bed. She had gotten lonely since Spike had betrayed her. Since her Spike had chosen the slayer over his own sire. "Dirty slayer..."
"Drusilla?" The male vampire asked, rubbing his eyes. "Where are you going, Dru?" He pressed, now getting up from the bed.
Drusilla was rummaging through her drawers, throwing all of the clothes that didn't please her onto the bed, creating a large pile. "We have to stop it...."
She began rambling, talking mostly to herself while also talking to the vampire and the faeries that haunted her.
They had told eachother a little secret while they were talking. It wasn't like she couldn't sense it. Everyone could sense it. Something was rising. Something was coming to liberate the demons.
They would have their hell on earth once again. They would have it soon. "Stop what, Drusilla?" The other vampire asked, genuinely concerned. He had taken a liking to her in the last year. While he was still alive, he had been alone, a poor, lonely little boy that knew nothing of the life he could be living. He liked the thought that Drusilla needed him, needed someone. He couldn't understand her half the time, with her inane ramblings and horrific notions. He knew that she saw things. That she could sense things before they happen. But he also knew about Spike. He knew about her childe and he knew about her sire, and the strong influence that they continued to have on her. He also knew that he didn't like that influence.
"The prophecy, the sneaky little thing, they call to me, the faeries." Dru said, forgetting that she had been looking for something to wear, turning to face the other vampire. "It does want daddy." She said, still mostly talking to herself. "But not just daddy." She quieted, turning around and picking up a red dress.
"What does it want, Drusilla?" Shane asked, making his way towards the other vampire.
"Its her fault." She snapped while slipping the dress on over her pale body. "Whose? Drusilla, your not making sense." Shane reached out to touch her shoulder, causing her to jerk back violently, staring at him with anger filled in her eyes. "They think they can trick me." Drusilla said, buttoning her dress. "But they can't, I know what they want. I know what they want him to have..."
"What?" Shane asked as Drusilla made her way to the door.
Before stepping out into the hallway, Drusilla turned her head back to Shane. "His soul."
- - - - -A/N: Did anyone else see 'Lessons'? I'm sorry, i have to add this in! I love Spike, he was so hot in that episode, and then they had everything and the end it was all good (wahoo i did that without spoilers) And also, just because I proclaim my undying love for spike does not mean I will not hurt him beyond the telling of it. Have a nice day! :) please don't forget to review! Those keep me writing