Heal Me
Part 7
By Gem
The Summers house was eerily silent in the wake of the vortex. The only sound to be heard was the pounding of Willow's feet as she bolted down the staircase and skidded to a halt in the doorway of the living room.
"Buffy!"
"Mmm, present...mostly." Buffy sat up slowly, rubbing her aching head as she surveyed her surroundings with bleary eyes. Too many missiles had rebounded off of her skull this night for even a slayer's comfort, and not all of them had been the physical kind. "Where's...where is he, Will?"
Willow crouched down next to her best friend, brushing the tangled locks of blonde hair off of Buffy's forehead so that she could assess the damages.
"He's gone," the witch said absently. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Buffy grabbed the three fingers waving in front of her and gripped them tightly. "Enough for it to really hurt if I start seeing how far backwards they'll bend," she warned. "Which I might just do if you don't make with the details. Where did Holtz go?"
"Back."
Willow started to stand up, her hands slipping beneath Buffy's arm to help her friend rise as well. Buffy forced her own arm downwards, keeping the witch on the floor next to her.
"One syllable does not a detail make. Back where?"
"To when he came from," Willow said, resigning herself to explanations before first aid. "It was a temporal vortex, designed to reunite his body with the point in time that the molecules left the natural time stream."
Buffy stared at Willow in horror. "Are you completely insane?" the Slayer demanded. "Send him back to the guy who sent him forward in the first place? Why didn't you just let me kill him and solve the problem for good?"
"You mean because death made such a lasting impression on you?" Willow pointed out. "Okay, well, I guess it kind of did...but not the kind we needed." She crossed her legs beneath her and prepared for the long version of the plan so briefly touched upon before its execution.
"Anybody who can airlift a guy two centuries into the future isn't going to be stopped by an easy fix like death, Buffy. He...or she...could have probably raised Holtz like we raised you. Or maybe Holtz would just get the day as a do-over, except of course this time he'd be clued in to bring an army or something instead of one girl."
"But now he'll just do it all over again anyway." Buffy closed her eyes and tilted her head forward, feeling the protest of her throbbing forehead as more blood rushed to it. "All that was for nothing; Connor...and Angel...are still in as much danger as before. More, maybe."
Willow shook her head firmly, a mysterious little smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. "I said a temporal fold, Buffy, not a spatial one. I sent Holtz right back to the time he came from...not the place. He's here, in Sunnydale, just two hundred years or so ago."
Buffy's eyes flew open as she turned her head to stare at Willow. "Here?" she whispered, not daring to believe her ears. "Hellmouth sweet hellmouth?"
"Yup." Willow couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Who do you think he'll try to buddy up to first: the Spanish settlers, or the Shumash? One group won't like his accent, and the other won't trust the color of his skin." The witch was smirking; there was no other word for it. "Let's see his time traveling buddy help Holtz out of this...if he even survives the trip. You got him pretty good."
"I know." The smile abruptly fell from Buffy's face. "I would have done more if you hadn't come up with that DeLorean twister, Will. I would have killed him."
Willow reached out and clutched Buffy's shoulder tightly. "He wasn't giving you much choice. I mean what were we supposed to do?" She shrugged helplessly. "Call the cops and let them figure out how to keep a leash on him? Assuming we could even explain how and why he was here."
"I wasn't actually thinking it out that clearly," Buffy admitted. She stared down at her bruised hands, still smudged with Holtz's blood. "He was trying to take Connor away, and trying to hurt Angel. I couldn't let him do it."
"There's a reason you don't get between a mother lion and her cubs."
"But he's not...he's not mine. Not really." Buffy looked up at Willow, searching her friend's eyes for some shred of disagreement.
As always, she knew she could count on her Willow.
"That's not what you told that girl upstairs." Willow grinned at the memory; at least something good had come of the disaster. "I think you stated your claim pretty clearly: my baby."
"Oh yeah, umm, that." Buffy flushed and looked away. "Listen, can we...can we not mention that part to Angel quite yet?" She forced herself to face her friend again as she continued. "I mean we've just gotten back together and all and I...well, we're both a little wigged at how easily it all came together. I don't want things falling apart now just because he...I...we aren't ready to admit they aren't going to fall apart...if you know what I mean."
"Not in the slightest, but I can keep a secret. Which," Willow added hastily, "is kind of what I wish you would do. About the spell...the magick. If Tara found out..."
"Found out what?" Buffy challenged. "That you saved Connor's life, and Angel's, and maybe mine too? You weren't doing a spell for the thrill, Willow. We needed you tonight."
Willow stood up in one abrupt movement, and began to pace the length of the living room.
"But it's still magick," she protested, gesturing wildly with her hands. "Tara wanted me to stop...she said I was hooked...and maybe I really am because when you were fighting that girl I was thinking of the most awful ways to stop her...and then when I was tying her up I started thinking about ways to stop Holtz...and I hate to admit it but not one single solitary computer-y thought came to my head...not even hitting him with my laptop, which, well, I suppose wouldn't actually be very computer geek of me anyway...I mean, my laptop...but it doesn't matter because all I could think was spells anyway," she finished with a wail. "And if Tara found out..."
Buffy scrambled to her feet, suppressing a groan. Regardless of Willow's attraction to things magickal, the Slayer would be grateful when her own body stopped the war between physical and supernatural strengths and let her feel like her old self again. Superpowers had to learn to work together.
"Willow, relax." Buffy leaned over and stopped the witch in mid-pace to give her a reassuring hug. "I won't say anything; I promise." She pulled back, still holding Willow by the shoulders. "But you have to," she added firmly. "If you ever want things to be the way they used to be between you guys, you have to be honest with her."
"I can't," Willow answered fretfully.
Buffy sighed and dropped her hands down to her sides. "Look, we can figure that part out later. Right now we have to call Angel, and then call the cops. We might not have been able to explain Holtz, but I'm pretty sure the girl is from the present. Either that or she found a really progressive dentist way back yonder. I could have put on makeup by the light reflecting off her fillings."
"Meow."
The Slayer flashed her a quick grin. "That'll teach her to mess with the big cats."
* * * * *
Angel could see the flashing lights from the moment he turned onto Revello Drive, but he'd known they were going to be there for much longer. It had all been going too well; he had become, as Giles once aptly put it, complacent in his humanity. And now, as before, Buffy was the one paying the price for his arrogance.
"What the heck?" Cordelia exclaimed, leaning over Wesley to get an unobstructed view of the organized chaos that reigned on the Summers' front lawn. "I know you thought something was up, Angel, but since when does Buffy voluntarily call the police?"
"Maybe she couldn't, so someone else call...ouch!" Fred's voice trailed off after a sharp elbow dug into her side, followed by patently false smile of apology on the green face beside her.
"I'm sorry, sunshine," Lorne said smoothly. "Was that your hip? I thought it was mine."
"Uh, Lorne, you mind keeping that kind of confusion to a minimum with my girl?" Gunn asked, his polite tone at war with the possessive arm he tightened around Fred's shoulders.
Lorne raised his hand in pledge. "Down to the bare bones," he promised.
"Lorne, please," Wesley said. Normally Angel would have been the mediator, but Wesley could see his friend was too deep within his own thoughts and worries to even hear the conversation flowing around him.
Angel wrenched the Belvedere across the road and onto the edge of the front lawn, jamming the gearshift into 'PARK' and sliding out of the car without even bothering to turn the vehicle off first.
"Angel!" Cordelia called after him. "What do you want us to do?"
"He doesn't hear you, Cordelia," Wesley murmured, his eyes following the dark figure that ran up the lawn and disappeared into the open doorway. "We'll just give him a moment or two and then we'll join him."
"Join him in what?" Gunn asked uneasily. "I'm suddenly thinking the big guy's creepy crawlies weren't so all in his head after all."
"Then he needs us more than ever." Wesley shrugged his shoulders as he turned in his seat to look at Gunn in the back. "Whom else does he have?"
* * * * *
Angel bolted through the open door, ready to start bellowing Buffy's name regardless of any Brando-esque connotations his actions, and his leather coat, might inspire. Before he had time to open his mouth, however, he saw her in the hallway with Connor. The baby was resting quietly in her arms as she talked to a police officer, or someone Angel would recognize as a police officer when he could focus on anyone but his lover and their...his...child. Connor showed no signs of injury, but Angel could see fading bruises on Buffy's too-pale skin, and smell the hastily washed-off blood, some of it her own. But she was safe; they were both safe.
"Angel," she said, sounding pleased but not very surprised.
"Buffy," he breathed, reaffirming to himself that she was really here before him and not just a desperate dream.
She quickly crossed over to him, since he seemed incapable of movement or further speech at the moment, so great was his relief. Buffy pushed Connor into his arms, leaving one hand resting on the child's back. The other hand she extended to brush against Angel's cool cheek.
"He's okay," she said softly, reading the thousand questions and fears speeding through his mind and across his face. "We're all okay." She stood on tiptoe to press a gentle kiss on his frozen lips. "But I'm glad you're back anyway," she whispered against his mouth.
He freed one arm from around Connor and suddenly slid it around Buffy's waist, pulling her so tightly against him that the baby squawked in protest. For an instant Angel allowed himself the luxury of feeling her body against his, so warm and alive and here with him instead of in a cold, lonely grave in the woods. Then reason, and his son's cries, began to reassert themselves over his fears and he let Buffy go.
For the moment.
"Are you the baby's father?" the policewoman asked, her pen and notebook at the ready.
Angel could only nod, his eyes still following the prescribed pathway between his son's face and his lover's.
"Mr." the officer began, pausing to allow him to fill in the blanks.
"Just call me Angel," he said hastily.
"Okay Mr., umm, Angel, I need to ask a few questions and then I can let you all have some peace and quiet," the officer said smoothly. "Miss Summers alleges two strangers entered her home tonight, one presenting himself at the front door as some sort of evangelist while the other climbed in a bedroom window. She believes they were conspiring together to kidnap your son."
"Kidnap?" Angel asked sharply, his attention finally wrested from his beloved's face.
"The would-be preacher escaped," the officer consulted her notebook, "a middle-aged man, shoulder-length greying hair, a little under six feet tall and rather stocky." She looked up at Angel, her face carefully blank. "Sound like anyone you know?"
Angel could see Holtz's face flash before his mind's eye and a fury so great it nearly choked him swept over the vampire. With difficulty, he tamped it down for future use and concentrated on looking bewildered.
"I don't...I'm not sure. I'm a P.I.; you run into a lot of not-so-nice people in my line of work. You say he got away?"
He asked the question of the police officer, but it was from Buffy's eyes he received his answer. Something quick and dark flashed through her hazel depths, warning him of a less than clean resolution of the situation.
"He did," the officer affirmed, "but his associate, a young woman, did not. The paramedics should be bringing her down any second."
Angel didn't have to feign confusion this time; he had never pictured Holtz working with a woman, especially a young one. Holtz seemed too deeply entrenched in his Puritanical origins and the shattering of his family to have any interest in the opposite sex, even for business reasons.
"A woman? Do you know who she is?"
"Her driver's license says she's Justine McEnery, from Los Angeles. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No, I don't know anyone named Justine. Did she say she knew me?"
The officer allowed herself a slight smile. "She's not actually saying too much of anything right now. The paramedics think your girlfriend broke her jaw...along with a couple other of her favorite bones."
"She was trying to take Connor," Buffy said indignantly. "I already told you, the guy was obviously some sort of diversion to keep me downstairs while she took the baby. If Dawn hadn't walked in when she did..." She shivered in honest fear.
"Is Dawn all right?" Angel asked swiftly.
Buffy smiled up at him. "She's fine. She screamed and that woke Willow up, so the two of them held the girl off until I got free from the guy down here and went up to help. I got in a lucky kick," she flashed an impudent grin at Angel, "and she caved like Xander faced with a box of jelly doughnuts."
"Miss Summers is pressing charges for breaking and entering and criminal trespass, but as the child's father you're the only one who can press kidnapping charges. I hope you will consider it."
"I explained I wasn't sure if you could," Buffy hastily interjected. "I mean you are in LA most of the time still, and that would mean traveling here a lot to testify...traveling during the day...which I know is almost impossible for you." She forced a little laugh. "Because you're so busy and all."
Angel weighed his options. He could see Buffy's point; his "allergy" to the sunlight would make a trial difficult, if not impossible, to attend. On the other hand, if he couldn't kill this woman for threatening his son...and he was pretty sure Buffy wouldn't let him do that...then he wanted her out of the way for a very long time to come.
"How likely is it she would be convicted?" he asked, stalling for time.
"Honestly? Not great. She never actually left the premises with the child."
"Because we stopped her," Buffy protested, forgetting for an instant she was trying to persuade Angel not to press charges.
The policewoman nodded. "So you say. And I'm sure your sister and your friend would back you up. But since she never actually left the house, she could plead guilty to the trespass and claim she just picked the baby up because he was crying."
"While she was trespassing," Angel finished slowly.
"I know it sounds crazy," the officer shrugged, "but I've seen nuttier things than that get past a jury. For that matter, she could turn around and press battery charges against Miss Summers."
"For defending my home and my...boyfriend's baby?" Buffy asked. She didn't dare look at Angel to see if he noticed the slight pause in her protest; if he looked into her eyes he would read too many thoughts and feelings she wasn't yet ready to share with him yet.
"Afraid so. I'm not saying she'd win...but it would be messy."
"But you think the other charges will stick?" Angel asked.
"You can't predict a jury, but I would guess so."
"Then we'll go with just those," he decided.
The police officer snapped her notebook shut. "Fine. I'll need you both to come down to the station tomorrow to sign some forms, but for now I can get out of your hair." She glanced up at the top of the staircase as she headed for the door. "And it looks like the paramedics are ready to leave as well."
Angel turned around, leaving his arm draped around Buffy's waist as he watched the progress of the stretcher being carried down the stairs. The girl on it had her face turned away at first, but as they cleared the last step she rolled her head to look at him. Suddenly he knew why she had been with Holtz. The impotent rage in her eyes had found its equal in Holtz, and the two had fueled each other until an explosion was the only possible outcome.
It wasn't over; he knew that now. It didn't matter that Holtz was dead and his companion in revenge safely caged. As long as one vampire remained free to take or destroy lives, it would never be over. Each death deepened a well of hate centuries in the making, and whether or not he had caused that death directly he bore the responsibility for it indirectly because of what he was. What he might always be.
"It's not your fault, Angel," Buffy murmured.
He glanced down at her, amazed at the way she could read his guilty thoughts.
"Some...stuff...happened that made her want to hurt you, but it wasn't anything you did personally. She made you the fall guy because you were more vulnerable to attack. And that's what she was doing, Angel: not defending but attacking."
"I know," he acknowledged with a reluctant nod. He reached over and closed the door behind the paramedics, forgetting for the moment about the friends he had left outside. "It's just that every time I think I've got the final tally on Connor's enemies, someone new crops up. It's bad enough that he'll be held responsible for the sins I've committed; now he's supposed to take the fall for every other vampire in the world?"
"We won't let that happen," she promised, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
He took her hand in his, lightly brushing his lips across her skin just to feel the resulting quiver traveling up the length of her arm. He needed some reminder that everything Holtz tried to take away was still here, and miraculously still his.
"And how will 'we' stop it?" he asked.
She tore her eyes away from the hypnotic play of Angel's mouth against her hand and grinned up at him. "I think you've forgotten just what it means to have a slayer on the home team."
"You and me against the world, huh?" he murmured, turning his head to brush his cheek against her hand.
"Who's crazy enough to try and stop us?"
Angel raised an eyebrow at her sudden optimism. "Do you want me to start making an actual list, or is reading it off of the men's room wall at Willie's a good enough approximation?"
"Eww." Buffy wrinkled her nose. "My name is on the men's room wall at Willie's?"
"You're the Slayer; you have almost as enemies as Connor." Angel took a step closer, leaning down to whisper in her ear, "And you know, they're demons...and some of them are even dead...but they're not blind."
Buffy heard the sound of a door closing on the second floor, reminding her that Connor was not their only audience. She shot a quick glance at the empty landing before turning back to Angel.
"Can we, umm, hold that thought?" she asked reluctantly. "I kind of need a favor."
Angel straightened, his temporary deviation into romance abruptly put on hold by the concern he read in his lover's hazel eyes.
"You've got it, whatever it is," he vowed. "You know that."
"It's Willow; someone needs to talk to her. You're doing really well with the whole conversation thing these days, and even when you were Mr. Monosyllable you still kind of knew the right words...word...to kiss away the emotional black-and-blues." She wagged a finger in his face. "But no actual kissing, okay? Just metaphorical."
"Metaphors coming up. Where is..." he suddenly stopped talking and sniffed the air. Something was wrong. "Buffy, what is that burning..."
Their eyes traveled together up to the top of the stairs.
"Willow," Buffy breathed.
* * * * *
"That's it," Cordelia declared. "I didn't get to wait for Godot thanks to that completely reactionary director who insisted on sticking to an all- male cast just because the playwright wrote it that way like a hundred years ago and..."
"Don't let Angel hear you talk like that," Gunn warned. "You know it just makes the man tense when you start making like a hundred years was a long time ago."
Gunn's own fingers had been restlessly tapping on the doorframe for the past five minutes, but he was not about to be the first one to cave in to the mingled forces of curiosity and anxiety pervading the car.
"And I'm not going to wait for Angel either," she finished, glaring at Gunn over her shoulder. Cordelia stretched over Wesley and pulled the handle to open the door. "We're going in. Now."
"Maybe we should just give them a few more minutes," Lorne suggested. "You know, time to tidy up after the break-in or whatever."
Wesley glanced at the driveway, now empty of emergency vehicles. "It appears the police have left the premises, and the ambulance as well. Since we haven't seen Angel yet, I presume Buffy was not the one they placed inside. That being the case, perhaps we could..."
Cordelia didn't see any point to letting Wesley complete his thought; he'd already given in and that was what counted. She pushed him towards the passenger door with one hand as she reached for the latch on the driver's door with the other.
"Great. Everybody out."
* * * * *
"Willow!"
The witch moved slowly down the stairs, still half in a daze from the magickal overload her system had sustained. At first her concern for Buffy had suborned the effects, but when her adrenaline had receded, the magick had not. A few stray sparks still jumped out from her hands as she ran her fingers down the banister.
Buffy tried again. "Willow!" she called anxiously from the foot of the stairs. "Hands! Fire! Bad!" The Slayer turned to Angel, dropping her voice. "She's not really functioning on all cylinders right now, so don't use any big words like, well, 'cylinder,' okay?"
"What happened? I thought you said everyone was okay."
"She is. It's just...well, she used magick to get rid of Holtz and she's a little freaked about it."
Angel kept a watchful eye on Willow as the Slayer reached out to take her best friend's hand. One renegade spark later, Buffy moved her hand up to hold Willow by the arm, leading the unresisting witch into the living room. She carefully settled Willow down between she and Angel on the sofa, and then Buffy reached across her friend to take Connor from Angel, leaving him free to concentrate on Willow.
Holding the baby had nothing at all to do with making herself feel better, Buffy reassured herself. Nothing at all.
"Maybe this would be a good time to tell me exactly what happened to Holtz," Angel suggested, gently holding Willow's chilled hands in his cooler ones. "I know he's gone...and I'm grateful, trust me. But I probably should know how. And where."
The front door opened before the witch could answer, and Cordelia hurried through, followed by Wesley, and guy and a girl Buffy didn't know, and a green...man. But it was Cordelia who captured Buffy's attention.
"You brought...them...with you?" the Slayer asked in disbelief. "Even, umm, the Lorne guy you told me about?"
Lorne beamed at Angel. "Can't stop talking about me, eh big guy?"
"I didn't bring anybody," Angel protested weakly. "I turned on the engine and suddenly there they all were."
Buffy nodded slowly, still not quite believing her eyes. "Sure. Dad goes out for ice cream and the kids all go along for the ride."
"They just jumped in." He shrugged. "I own a convertible; it happens."
She raised an eyebrow at him, her tone only half-kidding as she said, "Sweetie, unless you remember to keep the top up, we're going to have to get a mini-van to cart everyone around."
Cordelia held up her hands, warding off such a dire twist of Fate. "Oh no. We are not trading in the Batmobile for the Mystery Machine. That's out."
Willow perked up briefly, shaken from her self-recriminations by a flash of the old rivalry. "Hey, the Mystery Machine was a classic symbol of sixties counter-culture." She pulled her hands free from Angel's grasp and leaned forward, resting her weight on her fists. "A group of friends living communally, forsaking the lure of corporate America to travel across the country trying to make the world a better...well, at least a not-so scary...place. And if it was good enough for Scooby-Doo..."
"A dog," Cordelia cut in. "Good enough for a dog. Need I say more?"
"Less would actually be better," Angel began. "Maybe you should all..."
"Not to be dissing your heroes or anything, but something tells me corporate America wasn't exactly panting after the dog anyway." Gunn shrugged apologetically at Willow. "Or that Shaggy dude. How many times you think they serve doggie treats at a business lunch?"
"But Velma," Fred added anxiously, "I bet they wanted her."
Gunn nodded quickly, seeing the plea in his beloved's eyes. "Well yeah, Velma. Or maybe even that Daphne chick if you put her in a little Ally McBeal power suit, but..."
Angel tried to regain control of the situation. "If you could just go in the kitchen and..."
"Oh really," Lorne scoffed.
Angel was surprised at Lorne's sarcastic tone, but relieved to have been heard. His reprieve, however, was destined for a quick and painful death.
"Can't you just see a purple power suit?" the demon continued, rolling his eyes at Gunn. "The mind reels."
"And on a redhead, too," Cordelia chimed in. "Like that is a color they should ever wear on a non-colorblind planet. Even Willow knows better than that." She shot a quick, concerned glance at her old schoolmate. "You do know better than that, don't you, Willow?"
"Cocoa's ready!" Dawn called out, coming into the living room directly from the kitchen with three steaming mugs balanced on a wooden tray. "Come and get it before the marshmallows...oh." She came to a quick halt when she saw the crowd in the room, narrowly avoiding the creation of a chocolate waterfall.
Squabbling ceased as all heads turned to pay homage to the comforting aroma now pervading the air.
"Saved by the chocolate cravings," Angel muttered under his breath. He settled back into the sofa cushions with a barely disguised sigh.
"I didn't know anyone else was here. Besides the cops, I mean." Dawn glanced down at the three lonely mugs on the big tray. "I guess could make more cocoa," she offered weakly. "You know, if anyone is thirsty or anything."
"That's a great idea, Dawnie." Buffy glanced quickly at Angel and almost laughed at the naked relief in his eyes. "Why don't the rest of you go into the kitchen with Dawn and get something to drink? You just had a long ride and I bet Angel is lousy at remembering to stop for things like snacks."
"Among other things," Lorne grumbled, shifting restlessly.
"Upstairs, third door on the right," Angel sighed. "And all you had to do was ask; I would have stopped."
"You didn't stop for red lights or speed traps," Gunn protested as Lorne darted up the staircase. "Poor guy was probably afraid you'd toss him into the bushes and pick him up on the way back."
"Why don't we adjourn to the kitchen for now," Wesley said mildly. "We can discuss Angel's driving habits at a more propitious time. And I, for one, could use a spot of tea." He thought about the long drive from LA, rendered much shorter than usual courtesy of Angel's lead foot. "With, perhaps, a chaser."
Buffy smiled gratefully at her former Watcher. "We really do need to talk to Willow alone, if you don't mind."
"The rest of you go ahead," Cordelia suggested. "I'll put Connor down." She looked sternly at Buffy. "It's way past his bedtime."
"Cordy, thanks, but no," Angel said quickly, jumping in while Buffy was still debating between suppressing her anger and letting it fly. "We want him here with us for a while longer." He nodded at the sleepy child, cradled in Buffy's arms. "He's fine, see?"
"I guess," Cordelia said grudgingly.
She couldn't quite shake the weird feeling it gave her to see Angel's son in Buffy's arms, looking like, well, like he belonged there. A part of her knew this was right; this was what she had wanted for Angel all along, deep...really deep...down. But seeing the three of them together like that on the sofa was almost like looking at the cover of some old-time magazine...if Norman Rockwell had ever painted "One Vamp's Family."
Fred tugged gently, but insistently, at Cordelia's sleeve. "Cordy, if you don't come quick all the marshmallows will be gone. And cocoa without marshmallows is just a concatenation of alkali-processed beans, phosphates and diglycerides. With, of course, enough added soybean oil and whey to provide texture."
"You really know how to take all of the flavor out of life, don't you Fred?" Cordelia commented as she let Fred lead her into the kitchen.
Fred shrugged. "That's what the marshmallows are for."
* * * * *
"Now that we've gotten rid of the chorus," Angel said quietly, "why don't you tell me about Holtz, Willow?"
Willow looked down at her hands, at the hands that cradled the power of a temporal vortex between them until it was ready to set loose upon an unsuspecting...evil guy. Holtz was an evil guy, she reminded herself. He'd tried to take poor little Connor away, and he was willing to kill Buffy to do it. He was the evil one, not her. She was just...an addict.
"It was a vortex," she sighed, surrendering once more to her guilt. "I wish I could have thought of some other way to get rid of him...or maybe if I'd let Buffy..."
"Kill him," Buffy finished for her. "I was going to kill him, Will, and you knew that. At least you gave him a fighting chance."
Angel was torn between relief and alarm. He didn't want Willow to bear the weight of a human life on her conscience, and he certainly didn't want that for Buffy either. But a live Holtz was an accident waiting to happen, and it was waiting to happen to his son.
"You mentioned a vortex," he prodded, fighting down the urge to grab the witch and shake a coherent story out of her. "What kind of vortex? Where did it send him?"
"When."
Angel frowned. "I don't need that much detail, Willow. I know it was sometime in the last couple of hours."
Willow shook her head, further confusing the vampire. "No, that's not the kind of 'when' I mean. It was a temporal vortex, so I didn't send him to a where, but to a when."
"A when? Which whe...what...when?" he growled in frustration.
Buffy looked up from studying Connor's amazingly tiny, amazingly perfect, right hand. "His own when. The 'when' when he left his own...Willow, you know Angel's right; this 'when' thing really is kind of awkward."
"Fine, next time you pick the metaphysical garbage disposal," Willow retorted indignantly.
"Okay, okay." Angel held up his hands in surrender. "So you sent him back to the eighteenth century; I get the picture."
Buffy grinned, her good humor fully restored at the memory of Holtz' current, or rather, past, plight. "She sent him back to good old Hellmouth central, circa 'circle the wagons cause them Injuns are on the warpath'." She quickly assumed a more serious expression at the sight of the stormy look in Willow's eyes. "Sorry Will. The Native Americans were...demonstrating their disagreement with the subjugation of their lands and people by marching their horses in a circular fashion around the settlers...while holding loaded weapons. The Native Americans holding the weapons, I mean...though I guess the settlers had a few too."
"So he is, or actually was, in Sunnydale," Angel said, wrenching the conversation back on track. "Why send him back here? I can see avoiding the exact place where he came from - he'd only repeat the past. But why Sunnydale?"
Willow shrugged. "There weren't many people here...other than the Shumash, who won't want anything to do with him. I didn't want him interacting with people he wouldn't have met before. You never know what damage you can cause by playing with a timeline. You think you're fixing one little problem...but who knows how many rifts you're opening?"
Angel though guiltily of the Oracles, and the day he had forsaken to purchase Buffy's life. He'd often wondered what might have happened if he had left the events of that day unchanged. Would he have found a better way to defeat the Scourge if he hadn't depended on his own demonic strength, strength that later was required of Doyle instead? Would Buffy have despaired to the point of offering her own life for Dawn's if he had been there to support her? Would he have been as susceptible to Darla's mindgames if Buffy had been at his side? Would Connor have even been born, or would he instead have been...no, there was no point in letting the wondering game go so far. What was done was done, but he did see Willow's point.
"You probably did the right thing," he mumbled, trying to clamp the lid down on his wandering thoughts.
"There's no 'probably' about it," Buffy said indignantly. "She did do the right thing. Tell her she did the right thing, Angel."
He looked up, startled out of his reverie by the sharpness in his beloved's tone of voice. Suddenly he realized where his silence had led her.
"You did the right thing, Willow," he hastily assured the witch. "I know you're trying not to use magick, and believe me, I understand, but you did what needed to be done."
"I don't think Tara is going to agree with you," Willow said glumly. "I worked so hard to stop...and I was doing really well too..."
"You were doing great," Buffy said, patting her on the back.
"But now it's all ruined and I have to start over." She looked down at her hands again; they looked too small to have wrecked three lives with a single twist. "At this rate I'll never get my 20-year cake."
Angel sighed, reminding himself that for all her ancient knowledge, Willow was still very young in her heart.
"Willow," he said patiently, "you're not an addict. At least you're not addicted to magick."
"You haven't been here, Angel. You don't know."
"No, but I've heard a lot about the past few years in a really intense format this last week. I also know what kind of a person you were before I left Sunnydale, and I don't think you could have changed that completely in three years." He smiled sheepishly. "I did a lot of lurking in the old days, Willow; I saw more than any of you realized."
Buffy leaned across Willow and patted Angel gently on the knee. "That's my sweet stalker guy."
He shrugged, the promise of the future stretching before them removing most of the sting from his memories. "What else was I supposed to do during the daylight but watch from a distance? I couldn't very well ask you to join me in the sewers."
"I would have," she protested.
Angel nodded, his voice becoming slightly husky as he answered, "That's why I never asked."
Willow could feel the temperature in the room suddenly leap up a few degrees. She cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa between the lovers. A need for Tara's warm presence overwhelmed her.
"Umm, guys, still actually here," the witch mumbled miserably, wishing she were anywhere else...as long as that 'else' included Tara.
Angel laughed self-consciously, deliberately moving his large body further away from his companions. "Willow, will you take it from someone who knows - what you crave is control. And until you start dealing with that problem, you'll be at the mercy of whatever gimmick of the week seems to give it to you."
"Angel," Buffy said warningly. "Willow doesn't need you to make fun of her problem."
"I'm not making fun," he said earnestly. "I know a little something about this, Buffy; why do you think I did the things I did to Dru?" He looked away for a moment as he added, "Or to you?"
"Don't."
"I spent most of my human years feeling powerless," he rushed on, not wanting to delve into old pain any more than Buffy. "My father had a way of doing that to me. So when I was changed, I wanted control more than anything, not over myself but over others. For a long time I felt like the demon gave it to me."
"And that spells Willow to you how?" Buffy glanced apologetically at her best friend. "Sorry, Will; the pun just sort of slipped in."
"It's normal to want to take charge of your own life, especially when you're young," Angel said gently, "and that's when it's the hardest to do. That's where addictions come from. But Willow...what you're looking for is control of the world around you, and magick was simply the fastest way you found to achieve it. You could just as easily have used your computer and hacked your way into the captain's chair." A warning note entered his voice. "You still might."
Willow quickly pushed aside long-forgotten memories, those of her own demon beau. Moloch's scheme to rule the world through the Internet, with Willow as his queen, was nothing like her attraction to magick. Just because magick had proven to be more powerful that night, and helped to save her life, didn't mean she had weighed them each as opportunities for advancement and found computers wanting. Or that now, having cut herself off from magick, she would return to her first love.
"The magick...it really does make me feel something," Willow protested. She waved her hands in the air, trying to spin the words to describe her emotions as easily as she had brought the vortex into being. "There's a power flowing through me that I can't describe; that's what I crave."
"You can describe the power, Willow; it's called control over the elements." Angel shrugged. "You have time at your disposal; you can bend Nature to your whims; you can make people do what you think they should do, and even bring them back from the dead to do it." His dark eyes were filled with a strange kind of pity as he added, "You can create your vision of the perfect world and you don't have to let anyone else's vision get in the way."
"You make me sound horrible." Willow stared at him in shock. "I'm not like that; I'm not."
"Of course you're not." Buffy glared at Angel; she had not been expecting this. He was supposed to be comforting Willow, not confronting her. "You're not helping, you know."
"I'm being honest," he countered. "It will help more in the end than tact; I've learned that the hard way from Cordelia."
"So very much the person to be taking mental health tips from," Buffy offered tartly, tossing her head in an unconscious imitation of the self- same guru.
"She keeps herself saner than most of us in the middle of this mess." Angel's smile was apologetic, but his tone remained firm. "I'm not saying her methods work for everybody, but..."
Buffy held up her hands, partially in surrender and partially to cover the sight of her grinding teeth. "Not going to argue Cordy-issues here," she vowed. "Unless she hogs all the marshmallows. My point is that you're making Willow feel worse about herself instead of better. She had to make a quick decision and she made the right one. At least I think so."
"You're safe, Connor is safe; I think so too." Angel turned his attention back to Willow. "Buffy is right, Willow. You did the best you could to help others in a tight situation; that's all anyone expects of you." He tried to soften his words with a lop-sided smile as he added, "You're not actually supposed to control the universe, you know, so no one expects you to be perfect at it."
"But Buffy could have been killed," Willow protested, her forehead creased in an anxious frown. "I mean I didn't know what would happen to her when I let go of the vortex. I tried to warn her..."
"I heard you, Will; there just wasn't time."
"But if I told you before..."
"There wasn't time then either," Buffy firmly overrode her. "You told me I had to get out of the way when you gave the signal and I blew it. My bad, not yours."
Angel looked sharply at Buffy as an old fear he'd hoped to keep buried clawed its way back to the surface. "She warned you and you just ignored her?"
"It wasn't personal." Buffy raised an eyebrow at Angel's unexpectedly harsh tone. "She didn't have time to stretch the blueprints out on the table or anything, but I got the gist. It didn't break down the way it should have, that's all. But Holtz didn't get Connor; that's what's important."
"No, we didn't lose him," Angel murmured. He understood, far better than Buffy suspected he did, how much that meant to her.
"I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to Connor, Buffy," Willow broke in. "You were the one I was worried about. We...I...pulled you forward in the time stream when I brought you back to life. I didn't know what would happen if the vortex...it could have sucked you right back into being dead...or worse." The witch glanced miserably at her best friend, who immediately placed a comforting arm around her shoulders.
"Sometimes you don't get a lot of time to make the big decisions. You just have to do what you think is right and hope everything works out. And it did, didn't it?" Buffy squeezed Willow's shoulder as she added, "The big bad vortex didn't get me, so I maybe I'm supposed to be here after all. Go figure."
Angel stiffened abruptly at the surprise in her voice. "I think it's time Connor went to bed," he mumbled, reaching across Willow to take the baby from Buffy.
The Slayer frowned, sensing something had suddenly shifted. "Angel, what's wrong?" she asked worriedly.
"Nothing," he answered tersely, not daring to look at her. "It's late. He's tired."
Angel stood up and headed for the stairs without another word, smoothly dodging out of reach when Buffy tried to grab him by the arm. She started to follow him, and then hovered indecisively in the archway between the living room and the hallway, watching him beat a hasty retreat to the second floor.
"What just happened here?" she asked Willow, her eyes firmly pinned to Angel's back.
"That's what I'd like to know." Cordelia huffed impatiently as she strode into the living room from the kitchen. "We finally convince Heathcliff that having just a little bit of fun won't make his face, or his curse, crack...not an easy task, if I do say so...and then a week with you sends him back to roaming the moors. I just can't trust you alone with him, can I?"
Buffy heard something that sounded almost like anger in her old rival's voice, but the Slayer's mind was too busy mining the past few minutes' conversation for clues to form a suitably caustic rebuttal.
"He looked mad," Buffy fretted. "But it's not like Angel to bail when that happens. Actually it's not really like him to get mad even...unless there's some sort of human sacrifice going on."
"Gee, wonder who he learned to take the emotional express-checkout from?" Cordelia tapped her foot on the hardwood floor. "Are you going after him or am I?"
The Seer's tone, verging as it did on proprietary, finally penetrated Buffy's consciousness and ground its way into barely healed wounds. She stared at her former classmate, her old rival, her lover's best friend.
"Put one foot on those stairs before I say the word, and you won't have a hair left on your head to bleach." The Slayer smiled sweetly as she stepped up onto the first riser. "Not that it would be too easy to color your hair in your future armless state anyway."
"Buffy! I was only trying to..." Cordelia's voice trailed off as the Slayer vanished from sight. She appealed to Lorne, who was peeling himself off of the wall behind the landing in the wake of Buffy's whirlwind flight to the second floor. "Do you believe that? I was only trying to help, Lorne. Angel sees that now; why can't she?"
"Blessed are the peacemakers," he answered, "but no one ever said they were popular." He hurried down to soothe his distressed friend. "I know it's not fair, my lovely olive branch, especially after you did such a bang-up job playing 'Mommy' when Angel's little bluebird of happiness fell off the White Cliffs of Dover. But he's all grown up now, and ready to leave the nest." He stretched his arms wide open and inhaled deeply. "Can't you feel spring in the air? It's mating season."
"Leave the nest?" Cordelia looked alarmed. "He's not just junking the car - he's tossing the passengers too?"
"Oh I wouldn't put it like that...but yes. Eventually. Nothing to worry your pretty little..." he did a quick visual reconfirmation, "blonde head over, though." Lorne draped an arm around Cordelia's shoulders and pulled her in for a quick hug. "These things take time, and we've got nothing but, right?"
* * * * *
Lilah Morgan pulled a battered manila folder from the top drawer of her filing cabinet and slapped it down on her otherwise immaculate desktop. Smiling politely at the guest floating ever so slightly in front of her desk, she took her seat and opened the folder.
"Mr. Sahjhan," she began, "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but the firm wanted to give your proposal a thorough review before making any decisions about committing time and resources to its, shall we say, execution."
"But you have come to a decision?" the demon asked, shimmering slightly as his eagerness overwhelmed his tenuous grasp on this reality.
Lilah's smile grew broader, baring teeth many a wary co-worker insisted had been sharpened on the bones of her former supervisors after an impromptu tour of the senior partner's wine cellar last winter.
"We most certainly have. Please, let me tell you all about it."
* * * * *
To Be Continued
By Gem
The Summers house was eerily silent in the wake of the vortex. The only sound to be heard was the pounding of Willow's feet as she bolted down the staircase and skidded to a halt in the doorway of the living room.
"Buffy!"
"Mmm, present...mostly." Buffy sat up slowly, rubbing her aching head as she surveyed her surroundings with bleary eyes. Too many missiles had rebounded off of her skull this night for even a slayer's comfort, and not all of them had been the physical kind. "Where's...where is he, Will?"
Willow crouched down next to her best friend, brushing the tangled locks of blonde hair off of Buffy's forehead so that she could assess the damages.
"He's gone," the witch said absently. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Buffy grabbed the three fingers waving in front of her and gripped them tightly. "Enough for it to really hurt if I start seeing how far backwards they'll bend," she warned. "Which I might just do if you don't make with the details. Where did Holtz go?"
"Back."
Willow started to stand up, her hands slipping beneath Buffy's arm to help her friend rise as well. Buffy forced her own arm downwards, keeping the witch on the floor next to her.
"One syllable does not a detail make. Back where?"
"To when he came from," Willow said, resigning herself to explanations before first aid. "It was a temporal vortex, designed to reunite his body with the point in time that the molecules left the natural time stream."
Buffy stared at Willow in horror. "Are you completely insane?" the Slayer demanded. "Send him back to the guy who sent him forward in the first place? Why didn't you just let me kill him and solve the problem for good?"
"You mean because death made such a lasting impression on you?" Willow pointed out. "Okay, well, I guess it kind of did...but not the kind we needed." She crossed her legs beneath her and prepared for the long version of the plan so briefly touched upon before its execution.
"Anybody who can airlift a guy two centuries into the future isn't going to be stopped by an easy fix like death, Buffy. He...or she...could have probably raised Holtz like we raised you. Or maybe Holtz would just get the day as a do-over, except of course this time he'd be clued in to bring an army or something instead of one girl."
"But now he'll just do it all over again anyway." Buffy closed her eyes and tilted her head forward, feeling the protest of her throbbing forehead as more blood rushed to it. "All that was for nothing; Connor...and Angel...are still in as much danger as before. More, maybe."
Willow shook her head firmly, a mysterious little smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. "I said a temporal fold, Buffy, not a spatial one. I sent Holtz right back to the time he came from...not the place. He's here, in Sunnydale, just two hundred years or so ago."
Buffy's eyes flew open as she turned her head to stare at Willow. "Here?" she whispered, not daring to believe her ears. "Hellmouth sweet hellmouth?"
"Yup." Willow couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Who do you think he'll try to buddy up to first: the Spanish settlers, or the Shumash? One group won't like his accent, and the other won't trust the color of his skin." The witch was smirking; there was no other word for it. "Let's see his time traveling buddy help Holtz out of this...if he even survives the trip. You got him pretty good."
"I know." The smile abruptly fell from Buffy's face. "I would have done more if you hadn't come up with that DeLorean twister, Will. I would have killed him."
Willow reached out and clutched Buffy's shoulder tightly. "He wasn't giving you much choice. I mean what were we supposed to do?" She shrugged helplessly. "Call the cops and let them figure out how to keep a leash on him? Assuming we could even explain how and why he was here."
"I wasn't actually thinking it out that clearly," Buffy admitted. She stared down at her bruised hands, still smudged with Holtz's blood. "He was trying to take Connor away, and trying to hurt Angel. I couldn't let him do it."
"There's a reason you don't get between a mother lion and her cubs."
"But he's not...he's not mine. Not really." Buffy looked up at Willow, searching her friend's eyes for some shred of disagreement.
As always, she knew she could count on her Willow.
"That's not what you told that girl upstairs." Willow grinned at the memory; at least something good had come of the disaster. "I think you stated your claim pretty clearly: my baby."
"Oh yeah, umm, that." Buffy flushed and looked away. "Listen, can we...can we not mention that part to Angel quite yet?" She forced herself to face her friend again as she continued. "I mean we've just gotten back together and all and I...well, we're both a little wigged at how easily it all came together. I don't want things falling apart now just because he...I...we aren't ready to admit they aren't going to fall apart...if you know what I mean."
"Not in the slightest, but I can keep a secret. Which," Willow added hastily, "is kind of what I wish you would do. About the spell...the magick. If Tara found out..."
"Found out what?" Buffy challenged. "That you saved Connor's life, and Angel's, and maybe mine too? You weren't doing a spell for the thrill, Willow. We needed you tonight."
Willow stood up in one abrupt movement, and began to pace the length of the living room.
"But it's still magick," she protested, gesturing wildly with her hands. "Tara wanted me to stop...she said I was hooked...and maybe I really am because when you were fighting that girl I was thinking of the most awful ways to stop her...and then when I was tying her up I started thinking about ways to stop Holtz...and I hate to admit it but not one single solitary computer-y thought came to my head...not even hitting him with my laptop, which, well, I suppose wouldn't actually be very computer geek of me anyway...I mean, my laptop...but it doesn't matter because all I could think was spells anyway," she finished with a wail. "And if Tara found out..."
Buffy scrambled to her feet, suppressing a groan. Regardless of Willow's attraction to things magickal, the Slayer would be grateful when her own body stopped the war between physical and supernatural strengths and let her feel like her old self again. Superpowers had to learn to work together.
"Willow, relax." Buffy leaned over and stopped the witch in mid-pace to give her a reassuring hug. "I won't say anything; I promise." She pulled back, still holding Willow by the shoulders. "But you have to," she added firmly. "If you ever want things to be the way they used to be between you guys, you have to be honest with her."
"I can't," Willow answered fretfully.
Buffy sighed and dropped her hands down to her sides. "Look, we can figure that part out later. Right now we have to call Angel, and then call the cops. We might not have been able to explain Holtz, but I'm pretty sure the girl is from the present. Either that or she found a really progressive dentist way back yonder. I could have put on makeup by the light reflecting off her fillings."
"Meow."
The Slayer flashed her a quick grin. "That'll teach her to mess with the big cats."
* * * * *
Angel could see the flashing lights from the moment he turned onto Revello Drive, but he'd known they were going to be there for much longer. It had all been going too well; he had become, as Giles once aptly put it, complacent in his humanity. And now, as before, Buffy was the one paying the price for his arrogance.
"What the heck?" Cordelia exclaimed, leaning over Wesley to get an unobstructed view of the organized chaos that reigned on the Summers' front lawn. "I know you thought something was up, Angel, but since when does Buffy voluntarily call the police?"
"Maybe she couldn't, so someone else call...ouch!" Fred's voice trailed off after a sharp elbow dug into her side, followed by patently false smile of apology on the green face beside her.
"I'm sorry, sunshine," Lorne said smoothly. "Was that your hip? I thought it was mine."
"Uh, Lorne, you mind keeping that kind of confusion to a minimum with my girl?" Gunn asked, his polite tone at war with the possessive arm he tightened around Fred's shoulders.
Lorne raised his hand in pledge. "Down to the bare bones," he promised.
"Lorne, please," Wesley said. Normally Angel would have been the mediator, but Wesley could see his friend was too deep within his own thoughts and worries to even hear the conversation flowing around him.
Angel wrenched the Belvedere across the road and onto the edge of the front lawn, jamming the gearshift into 'PARK' and sliding out of the car without even bothering to turn the vehicle off first.
"Angel!" Cordelia called after him. "What do you want us to do?"
"He doesn't hear you, Cordelia," Wesley murmured, his eyes following the dark figure that ran up the lawn and disappeared into the open doorway. "We'll just give him a moment or two and then we'll join him."
"Join him in what?" Gunn asked uneasily. "I'm suddenly thinking the big guy's creepy crawlies weren't so all in his head after all."
"Then he needs us more than ever." Wesley shrugged his shoulders as he turned in his seat to look at Gunn in the back. "Whom else does he have?"
* * * * *
Angel bolted through the open door, ready to start bellowing Buffy's name regardless of any Brando-esque connotations his actions, and his leather coat, might inspire. Before he had time to open his mouth, however, he saw her in the hallway with Connor. The baby was resting quietly in her arms as she talked to a police officer, or someone Angel would recognize as a police officer when he could focus on anyone but his lover and their...his...child. Connor showed no signs of injury, but Angel could see fading bruises on Buffy's too-pale skin, and smell the hastily washed-off blood, some of it her own. But she was safe; they were both safe.
"Angel," she said, sounding pleased but not very surprised.
"Buffy," he breathed, reaffirming to himself that she was really here before him and not just a desperate dream.
She quickly crossed over to him, since he seemed incapable of movement or further speech at the moment, so great was his relief. Buffy pushed Connor into his arms, leaving one hand resting on the child's back. The other hand she extended to brush against Angel's cool cheek.
"He's okay," she said softly, reading the thousand questions and fears speeding through his mind and across his face. "We're all okay." She stood on tiptoe to press a gentle kiss on his frozen lips. "But I'm glad you're back anyway," she whispered against his mouth.
He freed one arm from around Connor and suddenly slid it around Buffy's waist, pulling her so tightly against him that the baby squawked in protest. For an instant Angel allowed himself the luxury of feeling her body against his, so warm and alive and here with him instead of in a cold, lonely grave in the woods. Then reason, and his son's cries, began to reassert themselves over his fears and he let Buffy go.
For the moment.
"Are you the baby's father?" the policewoman asked, her pen and notebook at the ready.
Angel could only nod, his eyes still following the prescribed pathway between his son's face and his lover's.
"Mr." the officer began, pausing to allow him to fill in the blanks.
"Just call me Angel," he said hastily.
"Okay Mr., umm, Angel, I need to ask a few questions and then I can let you all have some peace and quiet," the officer said smoothly. "Miss Summers alleges two strangers entered her home tonight, one presenting himself at the front door as some sort of evangelist while the other climbed in a bedroom window. She believes they were conspiring together to kidnap your son."
"Kidnap?" Angel asked sharply, his attention finally wrested from his beloved's face.
"The would-be preacher escaped," the officer consulted her notebook, "a middle-aged man, shoulder-length greying hair, a little under six feet tall and rather stocky." She looked up at Angel, her face carefully blank. "Sound like anyone you know?"
Angel could see Holtz's face flash before his mind's eye and a fury so great it nearly choked him swept over the vampire. With difficulty, he tamped it down for future use and concentrated on looking bewildered.
"I don't...I'm not sure. I'm a P.I.; you run into a lot of not-so-nice people in my line of work. You say he got away?"
He asked the question of the police officer, but it was from Buffy's eyes he received his answer. Something quick and dark flashed through her hazel depths, warning him of a less than clean resolution of the situation.
"He did," the officer affirmed, "but his associate, a young woman, did not. The paramedics should be bringing her down any second."
Angel didn't have to feign confusion this time; he had never pictured Holtz working with a woman, especially a young one. Holtz seemed too deeply entrenched in his Puritanical origins and the shattering of his family to have any interest in the opposite sex, even for business reasons.
"A woman? Do you know who she is?"
"Her driver's license says she's Justine McEnery, from Los Angeles. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No, I don't know anyone named Justine. Did she say she knew me?"
The officer allowed herself a slight smile. "She's not actually saying too much of anything right now. The paramedics think your girlfriend broke her jaw...along with a couple other of her favorite bones."
"She was trying to take Connor," Buffy said indignantly. "I already told you, the guy was obviously some sort of diversion to keep me downstairs while she took the baby. If Dawn hadn't walked in when she did..." She shivered in honest fear.
"Is Dawn all right?" Angel asked swiftly.
Buffy smiled up at him. "She's fine. She screamed and that woke Willow up, so the two of them held the girl off until I got free from the guy down here and went up to help. I got in a lucky kick," she flashed an impudent grin at Angel, "and she caved like Xander faced with a box of jelly doughnuts."
"Miss Summers is pressing charges for breaking and entering and criminal trespass, but as the child's father you're the only one who can press kidnapping charges. I hope you will consider it."
"I explained I wasn't sure if you could," Buffy hastily interjected. "I mean you are in LA most of the time still, and that would mean traveling here a lot to testify...traveling during the day...which I know is almost impossible for you." She forced a little laugh. "Because you're so busy and all."
Angel weighed his options. He could see Buffy's point; his "allergy" to the sunlight would make a trial difficult, if not impossible, to attend. On the other hand, if he couldn't kill this woman for threatening his son...and he was pretty sure Buffy wouldn't let him do that...then he wanted her out of the way for a very long time to come.
"How likely is it she would be convicted?" he asked, stalling for time.
"Honestly? Not great. She never actually left the premises with the child."
"Because we stopped her," Buffy protested, forgetting for an instant she was trying to persuade Angel not to press charges.
The policewoman nodded. "So you say. And I'm sure your sister and your friend would back you up. But since she never actually left the house, she could plead guilty to the trespass and claim she just picked the baby up because he was crying."
"While she was trespassing," Angel finished slowly.
"I know it sounds crazy," the officer shrugged, "but I've seen nuttier things than that get past a jury. For that matter, she could turn around and press battery charges against Miss Summers."
"For defending my home and my...boyfriend's baby?" Buffy asked. She didn't dare look at Angel to see if he noticed the slight pause in her protest; if he looked into her eyes he would read too many thoughts and feelings she wasn't yet ready to share with him yet.
"Afraid so. I'm not saying she'd win...but it would be messy."
"But you think the other charges will stick?" Angel asked.
"You can't predict a jury, but I would guess so."
"Then we'll go with just those," he decided.
The police officer snapped her notebook shut. "Fine. I'll need you both to come down to the station tomorrow to sign some forms, but for now I can get out of your hair." She glanced up at the top of the staircase as she headed for the door. "And it looks like the paramedics are ready to leave as well."
Angel turned around, leaving his arm draped around Buffy's waist as he watched the progress of the stretcher being carried down the stairs. The girl on it had her face turned away at first, but as they cleared the last step she rolled her head to look at him. Suddenly he knew why she had been with Holtz. The impotent rage in her eyes had found its equal in Holtz, and the two had fueled each other until an explosion was the only possible outcome.
It wasn't over; he knew that now. It didn't matter that Holtz was dead and his companion in revenge safely caged. As long as one vampire remained free to take or destroy lives, it would never be over. Each death deepened a well of hate centuries in the making, and whether or not he had caused that death directly he bore the responsibility for it indirectly because of what he was. What he might always be.
"It's not your fault, Angel," Buffy murmured.
He glanced down at her, amazed at the way she could read his guilty thoughts.
"Some...stuff...happened that made her want to hurt you, but it wasn't anything you did personally. She made you the fall guy because you were more vulnerable to attack. And that's what she was doing, Angel: not defending but attacking."
"I know," he acknowledged with a reluctant nod. He reached over and closed the door behind the paramedics, forgetting for the moment about the friends he had left outside. "It's just that every time I think I've got the final tally on Connor's enemies, someone new crops up. It's bad enough that he'll be held responsible for the sins I've committed; now he's supposed to take the fall for every other vampire in the world?"
"We won't let that happen," she promised, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
He took her hand in his, lightly brushing his lips across her skin just to feel the resulting quiver traveling up the length of her arm. He needed some reminder that everything Holtz tried to take away was still here, and miraculously still his.
"And how will 'we' stop it?" he asked.
She tore her eyes away from the hypnotic play of Angel's mouth against her hand and grinned up at him. "I think you've forgotten just what it means to have a slayer on the home team."
"You and me against the world, huh?" he murmured, turning his head to brush his cheek against her hand.
"Who's crazy enough to try and stop us?"
Angel raised an eyebrow at her sudden optimism. "Do you want me to start making an actual list, or is reading it off of the men's room wall at Willie's a good enough approximation?"
"Eww." Buffy wrinkled her nose. "My name is on the men's room wall at Willie's?"
"You're the Slayer; you have almost as enemies as Connor." Angel took a step closer, leaning down to whisper in her ear, "And you know, they're demons...and some of them are even dead...but they're not blind."
Buffy heard the sound of a door closing on the second floor, reminding her that Connor was not their only audience. She shot a quick glance at the empty landing before turning back to Angel.
"Can we, umm, hold that thought?" she asked reluctantly. "I kind of need a favor."
Angel straightened, his temporary deviation into romance abruptly put on hold by the concern he read in his lover's hazel eyes.
"You've got it, whatever it is," he vowed. "You know that."
"It's Willow; someone needs to talk to her. You're doing really well with the whole conversation thing these days, and even when you were Mr. Monosyllable you still kind of knew the right words...word...to kiss away the emotional black-and-blues." She wagged a finger in his face. "But no actual kissing, okay? Just metaphorical."
"Metaphors coming up. Where is..." he suddenly stopped talking and sniffed the air. Something was wrong. "Buffy, what is that burning..."
Their eyes traveled together up to the top of the stairs.
"Willow," Buffy breathed.
* * * * *
"That's it," Cordelia declared. "I didn't get to wait for Godot thanks to that completely reactionary director who insisted on sticking to an all- male cast just because the playwright wrote it that way like a hundred years ago and..."
"Don't let Angel hear you talk like that," Gunn warned. "You know it just makes the man tense when you start making like a hundred years was a long time ago."
Gunn's own fingers had been restlessly tapping on the doorframe for the past five minutes, but he was not about to be the first one to cave in to the mingled forces of curiosity and anxiety pervading the car.
"And I'm not going to wait for Angel either," she finished, glaring at Gunn over her shoulder. Cordelia stretched over Wesley and pulled the handle to open the door. "We're going in. Now."
"Maybe we should just give them a few more minutes," Lorne suggested. "You know, time to tidy up after the break-in or whatever."
Wesley glanced at the driveway, now empty of emergency vehicles. "It appears the police have left the premises, and the ambulance as well. Since we haven't seen Angel yet, I presume Buffy was not the one they placed inside. That being the case, perhaps we could..."
Cordelia didn't see any point to letting Wesley complete his thought; he'd already given in and that was what counted. She pushed him towards the passenger door with one hand as she reached for the latch on the driver's door with the other.
"Great. Everybody out."
* * * * *
"Willow!"
The witch moved slowly down the stairs, still half in a daze from the magickal overload her system had sustained. At first her concern for Buffy had suborned the effects, but when her adrenaline had receded, the magick had not. A few stray sparks still jumped out from her hands as she ran her fingers down the banister.
Buffy tried again. "Willow!" she called anxiously from the foot of the stairs. "Hands! Fire! Bad!" The Slayer turned to Angel, dropping her voice. "She's not really functioning on all cylinders right now, so don't use any big words like, well, 'cylinder,' okay?"
"What happened? I thought you said everyone was okay."
"She is. It's just...well, she used magick to get rid of Holtz and she's a little freaked about it."
Angel kept a watchful eye on Willow as the Slayer reached out to take her best friend's hand. One renegade spark later, Buffy moved her hand up to hold Willow by the arm, leading the unresisting witch into the living room. She carefully settled Willow down between she and Angel on the sofa, and then Buffy reached across her friend to take Connor from Angel, leaving him free to concentrate on Willow.
Holding the baby had nothing at all to do with making herself feel better, Buffy reassured herself. Nothing at all.
"Maybe this would be a good time to tell me exactly what happened to Holtz," Angel suggested, gently holding Willow's chilled hands in his cooler ones. "I know he's gone...and I'm grateful, trust me. But I probably should know how. And where."
The front door opened before the witch could answer, and Cordelia hurried through, followed by Wesley, and guy and a girl Buffy didn't know, and a green...man. But it was Cordelia who captured Buffy's attention.
"You brought...them...with you?" the Slayer asked in disbelief. "Even, umm, the Lorne guy you told me about?"
Lorne beamed at Angel. "Can't stop talking about me, eh big guy?"
"I didn't bring anybody," Angel protested weakly. "I turned on the engine and suddenly there they all were."
Buffy nodded slowly, still not quite believing her eyes. "Sure. Dad goes out for ice cream and the kids all go along for the ride."
"They just jumped in." He shrugged. "I own a convertible; it happens."
She raised an eyebrow at him, her tone only half-kidding as she said, "Sweetie, unless you remember to keep the top up, we're going to have to get a mini-van to cart everyone around."
Cordelia held up her hands, warding off such a dire twist of Fate. "Oh no. We are not trading in the Batmobile for the Mystery Machine. That's out."
Willow perked up briefly, shaken from her self-recriminations by a flash of the old rivalry. "Hey, the Mystery Machine was a classic symbol of sixties counter-culture." She pulled her hands free from Angel's grasp and leaned forward, resting her weight on her fists. "A group of friends living communally, forsaking the lure of corporate America to travel across the country trying to make the world a better...well, at least a not-so scary...place. And if it was good enough for Scooby-Doo..."
"A dog," Cordelia cut in. "Good enough for a dog. Need I say more?"
"Less would actually be better," Angel began. "Maybe you should all..."
"Not to be dissing your heroes or anything, but something tells me corporate America wasn't exactly panting after the dog anyway." Gunn shrugged apologetically at Willow. "Or that Shaggy dude. How many times you think they serve doggie treats at a business lunch?"
"But Velma," Fred added anxiously, "I bet they wanted her."
Gunn nodded quickly, seeing the plea in his beloved's eyes. "Well yeah, Velma. Or maybe even that Daphne chick if you put her in a little Ally McBeal power suit, but..."
Angel tried to regain control of the situation. "If you could just go in the kitchen and..."
"Oh really," Lorne scoffed.
Angel was surprised at Lorne's sarcastic tone, but relieved to have been heard. His reprieve, however, was destined for a quick and painful death.
"Can't you just see a purple power suit?" the demon continued, rolling his eyes at Gunn. "The mind reels."
"And on a redhead, too," Cordelia chimed in. "Like that is a color they should ever wear on a non-colorblind planet. Even Willow knows better than that." She shot a quick, concerned glance at her old schoolmate. "You do know better than that, don't you, Willow?"
"Cocoa's ready!" Dawn called out, coming into the living room directly from the kitchen with three steaming mugs balanced on a wooden tray. "Come and get it before the marshmallows...oh." She came to a quick halt when she saw the crowd in the room, narrowly avoiding the creation of a chocolate waterfall.
Squabbling ceased as all heads turned to pay homage to the comforting aroma now pervading the air.
"Saved by the chocolate cravings," Angel muttered under his breath. He settled back into the sofa cushions with a barely disguised sigh.
"I didn't know anyone else was here. Besides the cops, I mean." Dawn glanced down at the three lonely mugs on the big tray. "I guess could make more cocoa," she offered weakly. "You know, if anyone is thirsty or anything."
"That's a great idea, Dawnie." Buffy glanced quickly at Angel and almost laughed at the naked relief in his eyes. "Why don't the rest of you go into the kitchen with Dawn and get something to drink? You just had a long ride and I bet Angel is lousy at remembering to stop for things like snacks."
"Among other things," Lorne grumbled, shifting restlessly.
"Upstairs, third door on the right," Angel sighed. "And all you had to do was ask; I would have stopped."
"You didn't stop for red lights or speed traps," Gunn protested as Lorne darted up the staircase. "Poor guy was probably afraid you'd toss him into the bushes and pick him up on the way back."
"Why don't we adjourn to the kitchen for now," Wesley said mildly. "We can discuss Angel's driving habits at a more propitious time. And I, for one, could use a spot of tea." He thought about the long drive from LA, rendered much shorter than usual courtesy of Angel's lead foot. "With, perhaps, a chaser."
Buffy smiled gratefully at her former Watcher. "We really do need to talk to Willow alone, if you don't mind."
"The rest of you go ahead," Cordelia suggested. "I'll put Connor down." She looked sternly at Buffy. "It's way past his bedtime."
"Cordy, thanks, but no," Angel said quickly, jumping in while Buffy was still debating between suppressing her anger and letting it fly. "We want him here with us for a while longer." He nodded at the sleepy child, cradled in Buffy's arms. "He's fine, see?"
"I guess," Cordelia said grudgingly.
She couldn't quite shake the weird feeling it gave her to see Angel's son in Buffy's arms, looking like, well, like he belonged there. A part of her knew this was right; this was what she had wanted for Angel all along, deep...really deep...down. But seeing the three of them together like that on the sofa was almost like looking at the cover of some old-time magazine...if Norman Rockwell had ever painted "One Vamp's Family."
Fred tugged gently, but insistently, at Cordelia's sleeve. "Cordy, if you don't come quick all the marshmallows will be gone. And cocoa without marshmallows is just a concatenation of alkali-processed beans, phosphates and diglycerides. With, of course, enough added soybean oil and whey to provide texture."
"You really know how to take all of the flavor out of life, don't you Fred?" Cordelia commented as she let Fred lead her into the kitchen.
Fred shrugged. "That's what the marshmallows are for."
* * * * *
"Now that we've gotten rid of the chorus," Angel said quietly, "why don't you tell me about Holtz, Willow?"
Willow looked down at her hands, at the hands that cradled the power of a temporal vortex between them until it was ready to set loose upon an unsuspecting...evil guy. Holtz was an evil guy, she reminded herself. He'd tried to take poor little Connor away, and he was willing to kill Buffy to do it. He was the evil one, not her. She was just...an addict.
"It was a vortex," she sighed, surrendering once more to her guilt. "I wish I could have thought of some other way to get rid of him...or maybe if I'd let Buffy..."
"Kill him," Buffy finished for her. "I was going to kill him, Will, and you knew that. At least you gave him a fighting chance."
Angel was torn between relief and alarm. He didn't want Willow to bear the weight of a human life on her conscience, and he certainly didn't want that for Buffy either. But a live Holtz was an accident waiting to happen, and it was waiting to happen to his son.
"You mentioned a vortex," he prodded, fighting down the urge to grab the witch and shake a coherent story out of her. "What kind of vortex? Where did it send him?"
"When."
Angel frowned. "I don't need that much detail, Willow. I know it was sometime in the last couple of hours."
Willow shook her head, further confusing the vampire. "No, that's not the kind of 'when' I mean. It was a temporal vortex, so I didn't send him to a where, but to a when."
"A when? Which whe...what...when?" he growled in frustration.
Buffy looked up from studying Connor's amazingly tiny, amazingly perfect, right hand. "His own when. The 'when' when he left his own...Willow, you know Angel's right; this 'when' thing really is kind of awkward."
"Fine, next time you pick the metaphysical garbage disposal," Willow retorted indignantly.
"Okay, okay." Angel held up his hands in surrender. "So you sent him back to the eighteenth century; I get the picture."
Buffy grinned, her good humor fully restored at the memory of Holtz' current, or rather, past, plight. "She sent him back to good old Hellmouth central, circa 'circle the wagons cause them Injuns are on the warpath'." She quickly assumed a more serious expression at the sight of the stormy look in Willow's eyes. "Sorry Will. The Native Americans were...demonstrating their disagreement with the subjugation of their lands and people by marching their horses in a circular fashion around the settlers...while holding loaded weapons. The Native Americans holding the weapons, I mean...though I guess the settlers had a few too."
"So he is, or actually was, in Sunnydale," Angel said, wrenching the conversation back on track. "Why send him back here? I can see avoiding the exact place where he came from - he'd only repeat the past. But why Sunnydale?"
Willow shrugged. "There weren't many people here...other than the Shumash, who won't want anything to do with him. I didn't want him interacting with people he wouldn't have met before. You never know what damage you can cause by playing with a timeline. You think you're fixing one little problem...but who knows how many rifts you're opening?"
Angel though guiltily of the Oracles, and the day he had forsaken to purchase Buffy's life. He'd often wondered what might have happened if he had left the events of that day unchanged. Would he have found a better way to defeat the Scourge if he hadn't depended on his own demonic strength, strength that later was required of Doyle instead? Would Buffy have despaired to the point of offering her own life for Dawn's if he had been there to support her? Would he have been as susceptible to Darla's mindgames if Buffy had been at his side? Would Connor have even been born, or would he instead have been...no, there was no point in letting the wondering game go so far. What was done was done, but he did see Willow's point.
"You probably did the right thing," he mumbled, trying to clamp the lid down on his wandering thoughts.
"There's no 'probably' about it," Buffy said indignantly. "She did do the right thing. Tell her she did the right thing, Angel."
He looked up, startled out of his reverie by the sharpness in his beloved's tone of voice. Suddenly he realized where his silence had led her.
"You did the right thing, Willow," he hastily assured the witch. "I know you're trying not to use magick, and believe me, I understand, but you did what needed to be done."
"I don't think Tara is going to agree with you," Willow said glumly. "I worked so hard to stop...and I was doing really well too..."
"You were doing great," Buffy said, patting her on the back.
"But now it's all ruined and I have to start over." She looked down at her hands again; they looked too small to have wrecked three lives with a single twist. "At this rate I'll never get my 20-year cake."
Angel sighed, reminding himself that for all her ancient knowledge, Willow was still very young in her heart.
"Willow," he said patiently, "you're not an addict. At least you're not addicted to magick."
"You haven't been here, Angel. You don't know."
"No, but I've heard a lot about the past few years in a really intense format this last week. I also know what kind of a person you were before I left Sunnydale, and I don't think you could have changed that completely in three years." He smiled sheepishly. "I did a lot of lurking in the old days, Willow; I saw more than any of you realized."
Buffy leaned across Willow and patted Angel gently on the knee. "That's my sweet stalker guy."
He shrugged, the promise of the future stretching before them removing most of the sting from his memories. "What else was I supposed to do during the daylight but watch from a distance? I couldn't very well ask you to join me in the sewers."
"I would have," she protested.
Angel nodded, his voice becoming slightly husky as he answered, "That's why I never asked."
Willow could feel the temperature in the room suddenly leap up a few degrees. She cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa between the lovers. A need for Tara's warm presence overwhelmed her.
"Umm, guys, still actually here," the witch mumbled miserably, wishing she were anywhere else...as long as that 'else' included Tara.
Angel laughed self-consciously, deliberately moving his large body further away from his companions. "Willow, will you take it from someone who knows - what you crave is control. And until you start dealing with that problem, you'll be at the mercy of whatever gimmick of the week seems to give it to you."
"Angel," Buffy said warningly. "Willow doesn't need you to make fun of her problem."
"I'm not making fun," he said earnestly. "I know a little something about this, Buffy; why do you think I did the things I did to Dru?" He looked away for a moment as he added, "Or to you?"
"Don't."
"I spent most of my human years feeling powerless," he rushed on, not wanting to delve into old pain any more than Buffy. "My father had a way of doing that to me. So when I was changed, I wanted control more than anything, not over myself but over others. For a long time I felt like the demon gave it to me."
"And that spells Willow to you how?" Buffy glanced apologetically at her best friend. "Sorry, Will; the pun just sort of slipped in."
"It's normal to want to take charge of your own life, especially when you're young," Angel said gently, "and that's when it's the hardest to do. That's where addictions come from. But Willow...what you're looking for is control of the world around you, and magick was simply the fastest way you found to achieve it. You could just as easily have used your computer and hacked your way into the captain's chair." A warning note entered his voice. "You still might."
Willow quickly pushed aside long-forgotten memories, those of her own demon beau. Moloch's scheme to rule the world through the Internet, with Willow as his queen, was nothing like her attraction to magick. Just because magick had proven to be more powerful that night, and helped to save her life, didn't mean she had weighed them each as opportunities for advancement and found computers wanting. Or that now, having cut herself off from magick, she would return to her first love.
"The magick...it really does make me feel something," Willow protested. She waved her hands in the air, trying to spin the words to describe her emotions as easily as she had brought the vortex into being. "There's a power flowing through me that I can't describe; that's what I crave."
"You can describe the power, Willow; it's called control over the elements." Angel shrugged. "You have time at your disposal; you can bend Nature to your whims; you can make people do what you think they should do, and even bring them back from the dead to do it." His dark eyes were filled with a strange kind of pity as he added, "You can create your vision of the perfect world and you don't have to let anyone else's vision get in the way."
"You make me sound horrible." Willow stared at him in shock. "I'm not like that; I'm not."
"Of course you're not." Buffy glared at Angel; she had not been expecting this. He was supposed to be comforting Willow, not confronting her. "You're not helping, you know."
"I'm being honest," he countered. "It will help more in the end than tact; I've learned that the hard way from Cordelia."
"So very much the person to be taking mental health tips from," Buffy offered tartly, tossing her head in an unconscious imitation of the self- same guru.
"She keeps herself saner than most of us in the middle of this mess." Angel's smile was apologetic, but his tone remained firm. "I'm not saying her methods work for everybody, but..."
Buffy held up her hands, partially in surrender and partially to cover the sight of her grinding teeth. "Not going to argue Cordy-issues here," she vowed. "Unless she hogs all the marshmallows. My point is that you're making Willow feel worse about herself instead of better. She had to make a quick decision and she made the right one. At least I think so."
"You're safe, Connor is safe; I think so too." Angel turned his attention back to Willow. "Buffy is right, Willow. You did the best you could to help others in a tight situation; that's all anyone expects of you." He tried to soften his words with a lop-sided smile as he added, "You're not actually supposed to control the universe, you know, so no one expects you to be perfect at it."
"But Buffy could have been killed," Willow protested, her forehead creased in an anxious frown. "I mean I didn't know what would happen to her when I let go of the vortex. I tried to warn her..."
"I heard you, Will; there just wasn't time."
"But if I told you before..."
"There wasn't time then either," Buffy firmly overrode her. "You told me I had to get out of the way when you gave the signal and I blew it. My bad, not yours."
Angel looked sharply at Buffy as an old fear he'd hoped to keep buried clawed its way back to the surface. "She warned you and you just ignored her?"
"It wasn't personal." Buffy raised an eyebrow at Angel's unexpectedly harsh tone. "She didn't have time to stretch the blueprints out on the table or anything, but I got the gist. It didn't break down the way it should have, that's all. But Holtz didn't get Connor; that's what's important."
"No, we didn't lose him," Angel murmured. He understood, far better than Buffy suspected he did, how much that meant to her.
"I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to Connor, Buffy," Willow broke in. "You were the one I was worried about. We...I...pulled you forward in the time stream when I brought you back to life. I didn't know what would happen if the vortex...it could have sucked you right back into being dead...or worse." The witch glanced miserably at her best friend, who immediately placed a comforting arm around her shoulders.
"Sometimes you don't get a lot of time to make the big decisions. You just have to do what you think is right and hope everything works out. And it did, didn't it?" Buffy squeezed Willow's shoulder as she added, "The big bad vortex didn't get me, so I maybe I'm supposed to be here after all. Go figure."
Angel stiffened abruptly at the surprise in her voice. "I think it's time Connor went to bed," he mumbled, reaching across Willow to take the baby from Buffy.
The Slayer frowned, sensing something had suddenly shifted. "Angel, what's wrong?" she asked worriedly.
"Nothing," he answered tersely, not daring to look at her. "It's late. He's tired."
Angel stood up and headed for the stairs without another word, smoothly dodging out of reach when Buffy tried to grab him by the arm. She started to follow him, and then hovered indecisively in the archway between the living room and the hallway, watching him beat a hasty retreat to the second floor.
"What just happened here?" she asked Willow, her eyes firmly pinned to Angel's back.
"That's what I'd like to know." Cordelia huffed impatiently as she strode into the living room from the kitchen. "We finally convince Heathcliff that having just a little bit of fun won't make his face, or his curse, crack...not an easy task, if I do say so...and then a week with you sends him back to roaming the moors. I just can't trust you alone with him, can I?"
Buffy heard something that sounded almost like anger in her old rival's voice, but the Slayer's mind was too busy mining the past few minutes' conversation for clues to form a suitably caustic rebuttal.
"He looked mad," Buffy fretted. "But it's not like Angel to bail when that happens. Actually it's not really like him to get mad even...unless there's some sort of human sacrifice going on."
"Gee, wonder who he learned to take the emotional express-checkout from?" Cordelia tapped her foot on the hardwood floor. "Are you going after him or am I?"
The Seer's tone, verging as it did on proprietary, finally penetrated Buffy's consciousness and ground its way into barely healed wounds. She stared at her former classmate, her old rival, her lover's best friend.
"Put one foot on those stairs before I say the word, and you won't have a hair left on your head to bleach." The Slayer smiled sweetly as she stepped up onto the first riser. "Not that it would be too easy to color your hair in your future armless state anyway."
"Buffy! I was only trying to..." Cordelia's voice trailed off as the Slayer vanished from sight. She appealed to Lorne, who was peeling himself off of the wall behind the landing in the wake of Buffy's whirlwind flight to the second floor. "Do you believe that? I was only trying to help, Lorne. Angel sees that now; why can't she?"
"Blessed are the peacemakers," he answered, "but no one ever said they were popular." He hurried down to soothe his distressed friend. "I know it's not fair, my lovely olive branch, especially after you did such a bang-up job playing 'Mommy' when Angel's little bluebird of happiness fell off the White Cliffs of Dover. But he's all grown up now, and ready to leave the nest." He stretched his arms wide open and inhaled deeply. "Can't you feel spring in the air? It's mating season."
"Leave the nest?" Cordelia looked alarmed. "He's not just junking the car - he's tossing the passengers too?"
"Oh I wouldn't put it like that...but yes. Eventually. Nothing to worry your pretty little..." he did a quick visual reconfirmation, "blonde head over, though." Lorne draped an arm around Cordelia's shoulders and pulled her in for a quick hug. "These things take time, and we've got nothing but, right?"
* * * * *
Lilah Morgan pulled a battered manila folder from the top drawer of her filing cabinet and slapped it down on her otherwise immaculate desktop. Smiling politely at the guest floating ever so slightly in front of her desk, she took her seat and opened the folder.
"Mr. Sahjhan," she began, "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but the firm wanted to give your proposal a thorough review before making any decisions about committing time and resources to its, shall we say, execution."
"But you have come to a decision?" the demon asked, shimmering slightly as his eagerness overwhelmed his tenuous grasp on this reality.
Lilah's smile grew broader, baring teeth many a wary co-worker insisted had been sharpened on the bones of her former supervisors after an impromptu tour of the senior partner's wine cellar last winter.
"We most certainly have. Please, let me tell you all about it."
* * * * *
To Be Continued