Title: Loose Ends
Author: Jane McCartney
Disclaimer: All the characters you recognize belong to Joss & co. (all hail the crackhead). I'm just fooling around with his universe, with no intention of making money or anything.
Classification: Buffy-Angel crossover
Rating: PG13
Feedback: Yes, please! Doesn't everyone want it?
Email: janemccartney@bol.com.br
Distribution: Anywhere, I don't mind, just credit me and inform me where it's at.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Theo, who actually made this project a viable one with his amazing and wonderful work - I'm truly grateful for your help with the English grammar and all the necessary adaptations. You're my savior.
Note: This is my very first attempt at fan fiction, and English is definitely not my native language, so I'd be happy if you guys didn't go too hard on me - please. I'm just doing the best I can here.
Summary: [Buffy-Angel Crossover] Xander shows up in Los Angeles, and brings with him a secret that'll lead him into dangerous territory. Can he cope with that? And his friends, will they be there for him? ***
"So, let's see if I got this straight," Buffy spoke in an artificial way, her features troubled and her body language all wrong in the lounge of the Hyperion hotel.
"You're sayin' you didn't tell me about Cordelia and Xander and Faith before, 'cause you didn't want to mention something like that over the phone, and you didn't want me to get all upset or worried over it," she mused. Every word being spoken in an ever-louder tone of voice, angry and with some hints of sarcasm present.
Wesley nodded slowly, almost tremulously, and when Gunn offered Fred a sideways glance the Texan girl frowned in return and just winced.
The blonde Slayer half-grinned, and it looked considerably more like a threat than an expression of amusement. "You know what, I don't think it helped so much! I'm still feeling pretty much upset and worried, ya know," Buffy spoke too calmly, gazing rather menacingly at her former young Watcher.
"Buffy, please," Giles intervened to calm down the blonde girl a little. The Slayer snorted, shifted just a little on the couch and crossed her arms as a belligerent kid would, under her father's instructions.
Fred noticed with a hint of confusion and curiosity when Spike, who was leaning against a dark corner on the room, eyed Buffy with genuine worry in his blue-eyed glance.
"Miss Su-" Wesley started to say, but his voice came out like a slightly strident and rather girly squeak.
The Englishman cleared his throat, shot an awkward glance at the Slayer and continued, "Buffy. Please do try to understand our position - I was the one who gave Fred instructions to withhold information until you got here, but my intentions were strictly honorable. I just didn't want to worry you needlessly, and I thought it'd be more seemly to give such, well... dire news personally. That's the reason I-"
"Yeah, yeah, you lied to Willow, road to hell, I got it already," Buffy hissed out, still seeming to have a hard time cooperating.
Giles decided to interrupt, before the ambience became even more hostile. "But still, Wesley, I-I'm afraid I still have a hard time following all this. You said Faith apparently broke out of jail, and Xander was with her. And a-also that Cordelia was previously on a possible search for Xander... who initially came here and tried to, to attack Angel?"
The older Watcher paused and took his spectacles off to clean them, not bothering at all to find a way to hide the perplexity he felt with what his own words were suggesting.
"I must admit it all seems like a bloody load of nonsense so far, and that I'm having quite a tough time trying to understand it all. Because what you haven't told us yet, is how it came about that Cordelia is currently in St. Matthew's hospital. And why Xander and Faith, a-are being sought out by the LAPD."
Buffy's hazel eyes looked down for a brief second; the girl wishing with all her might to believe this was all just a bad, very bad dream.
The Slayer never thought she'd have ever entertained the notion, but being in Anya's horrible green bridesmaid dress suddenly sounded incredibly appealing and a hell of lot more comfortable than hearing this.
Because, deep inside, Buffy's Slayersense was practically screaming at her that, whatever it was that Wesley was going to say, it wasn't gonna be good news by any stretch of the imagination.
***
Angel suddenly got up from his chair and started to pace along the hospital room, with disturbed and rather nervous steps.
"Look, Cordy, it's hard to accept - I get that, I really do. But you told me yourself, you remember him as being your attacker! The police also have proof positive against Xander, the crimes he committed. And I really think we should keep in mind the fact, that he did try to stake me as well," the vampire spoke rationally - caution and, at the same time, tenseness present in his voice.
The vampire sighed, and took his seat again. He looked down, and then at Cordelia again, taking her hand into his. "Cordelia... there are, well, some things aren't always... if there's one thing I learnt after Darla changed me, it's that not everything can be blamed on the forces of Evil."
The brunette girl cringed in dismay at Angel's condemnation of her ex, but she decided to ask anyway in a small and slightly tremulous voice, "What the hell are you trying to say?"
Angel sighed again, a heavier and thicker sigh this time. "The doctors... they think... no, they have reason to believe that Xander may have been suffering from some kind of schizophrenia," he stated softly, and saw the seer's hazel orbs grow wild.
"You can't possibly have bought that, Angel! Oh my God - I'm wrong, you have! You... oh, that's it! I just can't believe that *you* of all people really think that Xander could have suddenly gone schizo on us! Not when there's this whole bunch of weird stuff happening in the meanwhile!" she snapped, yanking her hand away almost brutally.
"How did he seem to you?" Cordelia then asked suddenly with a decided voice, but her figure, half-laying and half-sitting on the gurney of the hospital room, seemed eerily slumped and fragile to Angel.
He shrugged away these thoughts with an absent-minded shrug. The dark- haired vampire glanced at the brunette and frowned, distracted by his previous thoughts. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
The seer released an annoyed snort. "At the hotel yesterday! Did Xander... well, when he was with you in the Hyperion, how did he look like to you?"
Angel sat in thick silence for a second, and gazed at Cordelia in a perturbed way. "I don't remember," he admitted in confusion, a strange realization hitting the undead with full force.
"This is weird, I... I don't think I can remember one single second of our fight, I just... well, I know we did fight, as a fact. I know that, I know he tried to stake me but I just... I don't remember details at all, there are no images in my mind. No memories..."
"I can't remember either," the brunette girl practically whispered, her frown seemingly matching Angel's as in a reflection of their mutual confusion. "Not even a glimpse, there's just this big blank! Nada," she lamented with a shake of her head.
The vampire didn't reply; he just diverted his glance to Cordelia's, his look of conflict and hers of fear speaking volumes for them.
"Something's definitely wrong here, Angel," Cordelia winced, frightened. "And as much as you'd apparently like to believe otherwise, I don't think your comforting 'Xander is cuckoo' theory is gonna cut it to explain what's going on."
"We called Sunnydale," the vampire began, after a short moment of silence.
At the seer's sudden snap of head to his gaze, he continued, "Maybe we've found something, uh, a research kind of thing something. I'm not really sure what it is yet, but Wesley was waiting for Giles to arrive and exchange information."
"And you're telling me this now? Now?!" the brunette girl snapped in incredulity.
Cordelia tried her best to ignore the pain blasting through her body as she got up from the bed, and eyed the room in search of her clothes. After fleeting seconds she saw they were in fact lying on a chair, recently come back from the St Matthew's laundry and brought into the room by a nurse while she was sleeping.
She hastily grabbed the jeans and slid into them despite the gown of the hospital, with her look definitely not one of happiness and joy at the moment.
Angel sighed, and passed a hand through his dark-haired slightly spiky locks. "Cordy, I really think you should wait for a doctor before-"
"Hey! Don't you dare Cordy me," Cordelia cut him off with an upset glare. "And do you mind?" the brunette added with some annoyance in her voice.
"Oh, right, right," Angel replied and turned to a corner awkwardly, knowing he'd probably be all red and blushing if it wasn't for his undead condition while the seer shucked the gown for her red blouse.
The souled vampire, his face analyzing the wall of the room as his hands found their way to his pockets, said softly, "I, uh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, I just-"
At Cordy's loud and rather angry snort, Angel stopped, his vamp hearing letting him know she was still getting herself dressed from the sound of her blouse's zipper.
"This is a very interesting wall," the Irishman whispered awkwardly, feeling stabbed by the brunette's angry glances at him at that moment.
"You can turn around now," Cordy sighed, and Angel didn't take long to realize her previous anger was mostly gone, as her voice took a somewhat more morose tone.
"God, I still can't believe just how blind you can get, Angel!" Cordelia suddenly yelled once more, shaking her head with something that disturbingly reminded the dark-haired vampire of an animalistic growl.
Well, about the rage thing, the souled vamp did say *mostly* gone after all.
The young woman glanced at him, and then diverted her hazel gaze to the side. "You couldn't look past your own feelings? If it was anyone else... I mean I thought you'd be able to think clearly, even after everything that's happened, but I guess I didn't take into account just how much you and Xander really hate each other..."
"I don't hate Xan-" Angel began angrily, but Cordelia stabbed him with a furious gaze.
There was a moment of silence before the vampire shrugged helplessly, "He does call me Deadboy a lot."
Despite the situation, Cordelia grinned.
"I just wanna get out of here," the seer then said, tiredness definitely present in her voice. "Find out what the heck's wrong, help Xander and then have the longest bubble bath of my life."
As Cordelia walked in the door's direction, Angel suddenly stood frozen in place. "Cordy?"
"And also a large pepperoni pizza, with lots of cheese on top," the brunette daydreamed aloud, despite the obvious world of concern for her former boyfriend from Sunnydale. And the weariness that Cordelia was finding herself in the middle of, completely unaware of Angel's almost shy use of her nickname.
In an almost sing-song tone, her hazel eyes closed and lost in fatigue, the seer murmured, "Oh, and a nice, long stay in bed for at least a week..."
A sigh from Angel. "There's something else. Well, someone..."
Cordelia winced in anticipation - but as the dark-haired vampire's lips told her about Faith's reappearance in this nonsensical nightmare that their lives had turned into, all that the young woman could do was stand still and then scream in pain.
Because all previous thoughts of anger towards Angel for hiding the facts from her, bubble baths and pizza vanished from her mind as a world of agony filled her whole being, making Cordy's body cringe as another vision formed in her brain with its never-less-painful arrival.
Seeing Xander carrying the rogue Slayer Faith's bloody corpse would have been the greatest of shocks, if it wasn't for one other fact.
The Powers That Be's message was saying that, in the midst of all the unusual happenings - even by the standards of a former Sunnydale habitant like herself - there was now one more to add to the list.
Because the exact location of the vision was actually just a few hundred meters away from them, very close to St. Matthew's hospital limits and possibly in one of the nearby dead-end alleys at the back of the building.
And the murderer's familiar face was the most appalling thing of all.
***
Review, please!
I'm sorry for this chapter, is rather short and incomplete - hey, I just didn't want you guys to forget I'm here!
Author: Jane McCartney
Disclaimer: All the characters you recognize belong to Joss & co. (all hail the crackhead). I'm just fooling around with his universe, with no intention of making money or anything.
Classification: Buffy-Angel crossover
Rating: PG13
Feedback: Yes, please! Doesn't everyone want it?
Email: janemccartney@bol.com.br
Distribution: Anywhere, I don't mind, just credit me and inform me where it's at.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Theo, who actually made this project a viable one with his amazing and wonderful work - I'm truly grateful for your help with the English grammar and all the necessary adaptations. You're my savior.
Note: This is my very first attempt at fan fiction, and English is definitely not my native language, so I'd be happy if you guys didn't go too hard on me - please. I'm just doing the best I can here.
Summary: [Buffy-Angel Crossover] Xander shows up in Los Angeles, and brings with him a secret that'll lead him into dangerous territory. Can he cope with that? And his friends, will they be there for him? ***
"So, let's see if I got this straight," Buffy spoke in an artificial way, her features troubled and her body language all wrong in the lounge of the Hyperion hotel.
"You're sayin' you didn't tell me about Cordelia and Xander and Faith before, 'cause you didn't want to mention something like that over the phone, and you didn't want me to get all upset or worried over it," she mused. Every word being spoken in an ever-louder tone of voice, angry and with some hints of sarcasm present.
Wesley nodded slowly, almost tremulously, and when Gunn offered Fred a sideways glance the Texan girl frowned in return and just winced.
The blonde Slayer half-grinned, and it looked considerably more like a threat than an expression of amusement. "You know what, I don't think it helped so much! I'm still feeling pretty much upset and worried, ya know," Buffy spoke too calmly, gazing rather menacingly at her former young Watcher.
"Buffy, please," Giles intervened to calm down the blonde girl a little. The Slayer snorted, shifted just a little on the couch and crossed her arms as a belligerent kid would, under her father's instructions.
Fred noticed with a hint of confusion and curiosity when Spike, who was leaning against a dark corner on the room, eyed Buffy with genuine worry in his blue-eyed glance.
"Miss Su-" Wesley started to say, but his voice came out like a slightly strident and rather girly squeak.
The Englishman cleared his throat, shot an awkward glance at the Slayer and continued, "Buffy. Please do try to understand our position - I was the one who gave Fred instructions to withhold information until you got here, but my intentions were strictly honorable. I just didn't want to worry you needlessly, and I thought it'd be more seemly to give such, well... dire news personally. That's the reason I-"
"Yeah, yeah, you lied to Willow, road to hell, I got it already," Buffy hissed out, still seeming to have a hard time cooperating.
Giles decided to interrupt, before the ambience became even more hostile. "But still, Wesley, I-I'm afraid I still have a hard time following all this. You said Faith apparently broke out of jail, and Xander was with her. And a-also that Cordelia was previously on a possible search for Xander... who initially came here and tried to, to attack Angel?"
The older Watcher paused and took his spectacles off to clean them, not bothering at all to find a way to hide the perplexity he felt with what his own words were suggesting.
"I must admit it all seems like a bloody load of nonsense so far, and that I'm having quite a tough time trying to understand it all. Because what you haven't told us yet, is how it came about that Cordelia is currently in St. Matthew's hospital. And why Xander and Faith, a-are being sought out by the LAPD."
Buffy's hazel eyes looked down for a brief second; the girl wishing with all her might to believe this was all just a bad, very bad dream.
The Slayer never thought she'd have ever entertained the notion, but being in Anya's horrible green bridesmaid dress suddenly sounded incredibly appealing and a hell of lot more comfortable than hearing this.
Because, deep inside, Buffy's Slayersense was practically screaming at her that, whatever it was that Wesley was going to say, it wasn't gonna be good news by any stretch of the imagination.
***
Angel suddenly got up from his chair and started to pace along the hospital room, with disturbed and rather nervous steps.
"Look, Cordy, it's hard to accept - I get that, I really do. But you told me yourself, you remember him as being your attacker! The police also have proof positive against Xander, the crimes he committed. And I really think we should keep in mind the fact, that he did try to stake me as well," the vampire spoke rationally - caution and, at the same time, tenseness present in his voice.
The vampire sighed, and took his seat again. He looked down, and then at Cordelia again, taking her hand into his. "Cordelia... there are, well, some things aren't always... if there's one thing I learnt after Darla changed me, it's that not everything can be blamed on the forces of Evil."
The brunette girl cringed in dismay at Angel's condemnation of her ex, but she decided to ask anyway in a small and slightly tremulous voice, "What the hell are you trying to say?"
Angel sighed again, a heavier and thicker sigh this time. "The doctors... they think... no, they have reason to believe that Xander may have been suffering from some kind of schizophrenia," he stated softly, and saw the seer's hazel orbs grow wild.
"You can't possibly have bought that, Angel! Oh my God - I'm wrong, you have! You... oh, that's it! I just can't believe that *you* of all people really think that Xander could have suddenly gone schizo on us! Not when there's this whole bunch of weird stuff happening in the meanwhile!" she snapped, yanking her hand away almost brutally.
"How did he seem to you?" Cordelia then asked suddenly with a decided voice, but her figure, half-laying and half-sitting on the gurney of the hospital room, seemed eerily slumped and fragile to Angel.
He shrugged away these thoughts with an absent-minded shrug. The dark- haired vampire glanced at the brunette and frowned, distracted by his previous thoughts. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
The seer released an annoyed snort. "At the hotel yesterday! Did Xander... well, when he was with you in the Hyperion, how did he look like to you?"
Angel sat in thick silence for a second, and gazed at Cordelia in a perturbed way. "I don't remember," he admitted in confusion, a strange realization hitting the undead with full force.
"This is weird, I... I don't think I can remember one single second of our fight, I just... well, I know we did fight, as a fact. I know that, I know he tried to stake me but I just... I don't remember details at all, there are no images in my mind. No memories..."
"I can't remember either," the brunette girl practically whispered, her frown seemingly matching Angel's as in a reflection of their mutual confusion. "Not even a glimpse, there's just this big blank! Nada," she lamented with a shake of her head.
The vampire didn't reply; he just diverted his glance to Cordelia's, his look of conflict and hers of fear speaking volumes for them.
"Something's definitely wrong here, Angel," Cordelia winced, frightened. "And as much as you'd apparently like to believe otherwise, I don't think your comforting 'Xander is cuckoo' theory is gonna cut it to explain what's going on."
"We called Sunnydale," the vampire began, after a short moment of silence.
At the seer's sudden snap of head to his gaze, he continued, "Maybe we've found something, uh, a research kind of thing something. I'm not really sure what it is yet, but Wesley was waiting for Giles to arrive and exchange information."
"And you're telling me this now? Now?!" the brunette girl snapped in incredulity.
Cordelia tried her best to ignore the pain blasting through her body as she got up from the bed, and eyed the room in search of her clothes. After fleeting seconds she saw they were in fact lying on a chair, recently come back from the St Matthew's laundry and brought into the room by a nurse while she was sleeping.
She hastily grabbed the jeans and slid into them despite the gown of the hospital, with her look definitely not one of happiness and joy at the moment.
Angel sighed, and passed a hand through his dark-haired slightly spiky locks. "Cordy, I really think you should wait for a doctor before-"
"Hey! Don't you dare Cordy me," Cordelia cut him off with an upset glare. "And do you mind?" the brunette added with some annoyance in her voice.
"Oh, right, right," Angel replied and turned to a corner awkwardly, knowing he'd probably be all red and blushing if it wasn't for his undead condition while the seer shucked the gown for her red blouse.
The souled vampire, his face analyzing the wall of the room as his hands found their way to his pockets, said softly, "I, uh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, I just-"
At Cordy's loud and rather angry snort, Angel stopped, his vamp hearing letting him know she was still getting herself dressed from the sound of her blouse's zipper.
"This is a very interesting wall," the Irishman whispered awkwardly, feeling stabbed by the brunette's angry glances at him at that moment.
"You can turn around now," Cordy sighed, and Angel didn't take long to realize her previous anger was mostly gone, as her voice took a somewhat more morose tone.
"God, I still can't believe just how blind you can get, Angel!" Cordelia suddenly yelled once more, shaking her head with something that disturbingly reminded the dark-haired vampire of an animalistic growl.
Well, about the rage thing, the souled vamp did say *mostly* gone after all.
The young woman glanced at him, and then diverted her hazel gaze to the side. "You couldn't look past your own feelings? If it was anyone else... I mean I thought you'd be able to think clearly, even after everything that's happened, but I guess I didn't take into account just how much you and Xander really hate each other..."
"I don't hate Xan-" Angel began angrily, but Cordelia stabbed him with a furious gaze.
There was a moment of silence before the vampire shrugged helplessly, "He does call me Deadboy a lot."
Despite the situation, Cordelia grinned.
"I just wanna get out of here," the seer then said, tiredness definitely present in her voice. "Find out what the heck's wrong, help Xander and then have the longest bubble bath of my life."
As Cordelia walked in the door's direction, Angel suddenly stood frozen in place. "Cordy?"
"And also a large pepperoni pizza, with lots of cheese on top," the brunette daydreamed aloud, despite the obvious world of concern for her former boyfriend from Sunnydale. And the weariness that Cordelia was finding herself in the middle of, completely unaware of Angel's almost shy use of her nickname.
In an almost sing-song tone, her hazel eyes closed and lost in fatigue, the seer murmured, "Oh, and a nice, long stay in bed for at least a week..."
A sigh from Angel. "There's something else. Well, someone..."
Cordelia winced in anticipation - but as the dark-haired vampire's lips told her about Faith's reappearance in this nonsensical nightmare that their lives had turned into, all that the young woman could do was stand still and then scream in pain.
Because all previous thoughts of anger towards Angel for hiding the facts from her, bubble baths and pizza vanished from her mind as a world of agony filled her whole being, making Cordy's body cringe as another vision formed in her brain with its never-less-painful arrival.
Seeing Xander carrying the rogue Slayer Faith's bloody corpse would have been the greatest of shocks, if it wasn't for one other fact.
The Powers That Be's message was saying that, in the midst of all the unusual happenings - even by the standards of a former Sunnydale habitant like herself - there was now one more to add to the list.
Because the exact location of the vision was actually just a few hundred meters away from them, very close to St. Matthew's hospital limits and possibly in one of the nearby dead-end alleys at the back of the building.
And the murderer's familiar face was the most appalling thing of all.
***
Review, please!
I'm sorry for this chapter, is rather short and incomplete - hey, I just didn't want you guys to forget I'm here!