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?
***
"Are you OK?" Angel asked softly, sweeping the brunette's mussed hair away from her face with great gentleness.
Cordelia, held carefully in Angel's arms, felt the urge to cry angry, hot tears of woe; and then the seer realized, she didn't have any strength to fight that impulse anymore.
What she had just seen, the vision her mind had had to forcefully endure - the young woman simply couldn't fight the urge to weep any longer, and so heart-breaking muffled sobs echoed against the vampire's chest.
"Angel..." Cordy said weakly, in a cracking voice. "I... oh dear God, I saw it..."
"Shh, it's all right," the former Angelus whispered, brushing her brunette locks carefully. Even when his worry was increasing sky-high, Angel didn't want to push her any.
Cordy jerked her head up to look at him, and what the vamp saw was a mix of sorrow and disconcertment. The girl tried to talk, but the words simply couldn't reach her trembling lips as she felt the tears falling down her face in an ocean of pain.
And then, Angel noticed it. Her eyes, the way she was looking at him...
Something new was now present in her hazel orbs, and the vampire didn't know what. But it could have been...
Defeat. Just... plain defeat.
The great abyss in her hurt, rueful eyes was telling him that, screaming it at him; the mix of grief, pain, rage, and then, just a blank emptiness.
And that wasn't something he'd ever thought he'd be seeing in Cordelia's eyes, ever.
"Cordy..." Angel began, unease and fear imprinted in his voice. "What is it? What did you see?"
"You know I love you, right?" the girl felt the need to whimper suddenly, in a weak voice, and Angel didn't know how to react to that.
But then, before he could give any further thought to both his confusion and consternation at Cordelia's behavior, the former Scourge of Europe felt a strong blow connect to his head. And then another, and then there was just darkness.
The brunette seer, holding the room's lamp in one hand and fighting to keep ahold of her maelstrom of emotions, just could whisper downheartedly, "I'm sorry, Angel..."
***
The unusual quintet formed by the bride-to-be Anya, the hospital co-workers Michael and Kelly, and the two so-called criminals Xander and Faith, successfully managed to avoid Jimmy the cop's trembling aim before any other policemen arrived.
To be honest, Jimmy would have been better off trying to hit Faith and Xander, the two intended targets, if he'd have aimed the gun anywhere at random and just opened fire. The bullets that echoed from the young Latino's revolver were actually flying everywhere but their designed aim, as the nervous cop's hands just couldn't stop shaking.
Guided by Kelly, who'd brought them to a door in the alley that Faith easily managed to break down, the group entered a seemingly-old site firstly in silence and caution. Then they noticed its obvious emptiness, and relaxed a little.
The place was a large and old-looking warehouse; the overwhelming darkness of it only broke by a few weak patches of sunlight coming from two dirty windows, both three feet tall and located on overhead positions along the wall.
Stuffed with several dusty boxes, the warehouse could either imply a handy shelter or a tricky place where they could be isolated by the police force - however, they didn't exactly have many choices at the moment.
The quintet ran through the site's innards, forcefully having to run the risk and hope for the first option to turn out to be true.
***
After a minute or two, the group realized the Latino cop-boy hadn't broken into the warehouse behind them, and probably was waiting for reinforcements - which certainly couldn't mean anything fun, anyway.
"Who the hell are you people?" Michael asked in an unsettled murmur, his back leaning against one of the dusty boxes and his breath raspy.
The two time-travellers exchanged a brief glance, but the truth was they just didn't have the time to deal with this.
"Hey doc, don't go there right now," Faith's voice, if judged by an outsider's perspective, could have seemed either annoyed or somehow amused.
Now, Michael Penn wasn't exactly what one would call a courageous man. Crabby? Now and then, granted - his hard schedule actually made it almost a prerequisite in his profession.
Ill-tempered? Well, he'd had his moments indeed. Kelly had oftentimes been a victim of that.
Plus, occasional yelling at both at-blame and faultless co-workers was natural during the harder shifts at St Matthew's. Probably due to the harshness of so much blood, pain and, oftentimes, situations where all a doctor could do was watch helplessly as his patient's life slipped away.
But then again, it happened rarely with the wrong people - his superiors, for instance. Even when the young man could hate some decisions made by his bosses, he'd almost never gather up the courage to loudly complain about it. It just wasn't his nature to do such a thing.
And that was the reason why Kelly, co-worker, friend and some would swear something more now, felt suddenly breathless by Michael's unexpected outburst.
"You kidnap us, point a freaking gun in our faces and still, we're here saving your butts. So don't tell me not to go anywhere!" Penn exploded, his voice a barely repressed shout.
The Slayer and the former Zeppo could only exchange a look and a shrug. They seemed almost as surprised as Kelly by Michael's verbal explosion.
"Future pals, came back in time to do some Dead Boy staking, save the world and see if we can make some money on tomorrow's lottery numbers," Xander replied with jaded sarcasm. His attention wholly on the warehouse's main door, and his eyes never looking back into the doctor's ones.
"Look, cut the smart-ass bull, 'kay? I think we've earned some explanations - hey, if it wasn't for Nurse Marshall's help, right now you'd probably be lying on some table in the hospital morgue!"
Xander lifted his gun to aim at Michael's chest, out of pure instinct. Even when his intentions were for shutting up the young doctor and not actually shooting him, the young man felt an unsettling cold in his spine.
Anya whimpered at the unexpected act, and Faith just eyed her dark-haired ex-lover with great unease.
"Just stay quiet, alright? I, we, oh hell! We *really* don't have time for this right now, comprende? We don't have time, so just, ya know, just stay fricking quiet," Xander's voice was cracking up, and Faith and Anya easily noticed his effort to try to hide it.
It wasn't Xander's intention to act like such an asshole; but as previously said, both he and the brunette Slayer had too much on their minds right then.
Before a puzzled Michael could say anything at all, the young doctor felt a warm hand squeeze his smoothly. Turning around, he found his friend's widened orbs boring into his own blue eyes.
The sandy-haired man let out another weary sigh, his face showing dismay and unease, both for himself and for his curly-haired companion's life. Nurse Marshall offered him a gentle look, her eyes speaking volumes. Their hands, linked, tightened around each other considerably.
Anya, unusually quiet, did the same with Xander's hand. The young man, at first startled by the unanticipated pressure, then looked back at his fiancée with a small yet sad smile.
Eyeing the scene from her spot, Kelly just didn't know what to make of it.
Everything was really confused in the nurse's head right now, but it just couldn't enter into her mind how this scared man, who'd left the innocence of youth behind barely a few years earlier, could be all the TV had gone into so much detail about.
But that Cordelia girl confirmed it, the rational part of her mind remarked matter-of-factly, bringing chills to the curly-haired woman's insides. And besides, he is holding you as a hostage right now, isn't he? This time, wry sarcasm was included as well in its observation.
Faith anchored her arms and wrapped them around her body, a disconcerting feeling overtaking her being at the sight of the two couples.
It was hardly envy - the Slayer and loneliness had been best buds for practically an entire lifetime now. The two of them had walked hand-in-hand for almost every moment of her life, bar some rare Sunnydale ones.
"Don't wanna interrupt the little love-fest you people got going here, but we've gotta think of something to do about those cops - and we better do it fast," the brunette girl said sarcastically, her hard-ass shield moving promptly into place.
Anya's voice popped up, for the first time in several minutes. "Even though she's the first woman that my fiancé ever slept with, and she's with him during what should have been our honeymoon, and I'm thinking a lot about getting my former job back right now due to that, I think Faith has a point."
Michael, Kelly and even Faith had odd looks on their faces at hearing that statement.
After a pointed look directed at a fidgety Xander, the blonde woman continued her rant. This time with her expression harsher, "Not all cops are like Sunnydale's morons, Xander - the police will be here at any moment, and they have very nasty bullets that can injure you or parts of your body that I'd be really unhappy about losing."
Xander eyed the former demoness, as brutal images of the future came into his mind in the shape of an eternal, tormenting memento.
Anya looked more tense and jumpy than her usual jittery self, but he couldn't blame her for that. The young man couldn't even wonder at the confusion playing on his fiancé's mind right then.
One part of his mind, the one that was seeing all over again the future image of the blonde woman's vampiric self, just wished he'd managed to not involve her at all in this nightmare; but another guilty part of him found solace in her presence.
"Hey, no parts of me are getting lost here," Xander reassured her, playfully and even with a hint of boyish panic despite the situation.
"They better not," Anya snorted uneasily, feeling her heart twist at the sight of her fiancé's brown eyes and the frisky, brief grin on his lips.
Even though she'd so far just tried to shrug it away, the former demoness had a really bad feeling that she couldn't quite measure the nature of yet.
"Like I said, let's leave the cute 'n fuzzy stuff for later and move our asses," Faith interrupted forcefully, already moving further inside the warehouse in search of an alternate exit.
Penn and Marshall smartly followed the Slayer, and after some more briefly exchanged words of reassurance, Sunnydale's couple did so as well.
But then, the strangest thing happened. Xander felt his whole world going black and, while the warehouse became a very vague background, another place - a misty one - got stronger and stronger in his eyes.
The former Zeppo didn't hear the freshly arrived policemen's shouts at the quintet to hold it right there, or Faith's loud curse upon that happening; because for a fleeting second, he wasn't in the warehouse anymore.
Rather, he was somewhere completely different.
And standing in front of him with a white robe and wide hazel eyes, there was a girl whose face had once been the entire focus of his thoughts as a teenager.
"Hey Xander," the brunette greeted him playfully, a perky grin on her lips.
After a puzzled sigh, Xander's lips made a grin too, despite everything.
"Hey, Cordy. Can't get enough of the Xand-man action, huh? Women do tend to find it addictive," he replied mockingly, walking in her direction with his hands loose in his jacket's pockets, shaking his head in a somehow amused daze.
"Dream on, dorkhead," the seer retorted laughingly. The brunette's pretty features tensed at the next phrase though, "The PTB have a important message for ya, Xander. I'm just the messenger here..."
***
I really need a push to post more chapters, but you people just seem to have forgot me :-( Review!
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?
***
"Are you OK?" Angel asked softly, sweeping the brunette's mussed hair away from her face with great gentleness.
Cordelia, held carefully in Angel's arms, felt the urge to cry angry, hot tears of woe; and then the seer realized, she didn't have any strength to fight that impulse anymore.
What she had just seen, the vision her mind had had to forcefully endure - the young woman simply couldn't fight the urge to weep any longer, and so heart-breaking muffled sobs echoed against the vampire's chest.
"Angel..." Cordy said weakly, in a cracking voice. "I... oh dear God, I saw it..."
"Shh, it's all right," the former Angelus whispered, brushing her brunette locks carefully. Even when his worry was increasing sky-high, Angel didn't want to push her any.
Cordy jerked her head up to look at him, and what the vamp saw was a mix of sorrow and disconcertment. The girl tried to talk, but the words simply couldn't reach her trembling lips as she felt the tears falling down her face in an ocean of pain.
And then, Angel noticed it. Her eyes, the way she was looking at him...
Something new was now present in her hazel orbs, and the vampire didn't know what. But it could have been...
Defeat. Just... plain defeat.
The great abyss in her hurt, rueful eyes was telling him that, screaming it at him; the mix of grief, pain, rage, and then, just a blank emptiness.
And that wasn't something he'd ever thought he'd be seeing in Cordelia's eyes, ever.
"Cordy..." Angel began, unease and fear imprinted in his voice. "What is it? What did you see?"
"You know I love you, right?" the girl felt the need to whimper suddenly, in a weak voice, and Angel didn't know how to react to that.
But then, before he could give any further thought to both his confusion and consternation at Cordelia's behavior, the former Scourge of Europe felt a strong blow connect to his head. And then another, and then there was just darkness.
The brunette seer, holding the room's lamp in one hand and fighting to keep ahold of her maelstrom of emotions, just could whisper downheartedly, "I'm sorry, Angel..."
***
The unusual quintet formed by the bride-to-be Anya, the hospital co-workers Michael and Kelly, and the two so-called criminals Xander and Faith, successfully managed to avoid Jimmy the cop's trembling aim before any other policemen arrived.
To be honest, Jimmy would have been better off trying to hit Faith and Xander, the two intended targets, if he'd have aimed the gun anywhere at random and just opened fire. The bullets that echoed from the young Latino's revolver were actually flying everywhere but their designed aim, as the nervous cop's hands just couldn't stop shaking.
Guided by Kelly, who'd brought them to a door in the alley that Faith easily managed to break down, the group entered a seemingly-old site firstly in silence and caution. Then they noticed its obvious emptiness, and relaxed a little.
The place was a large and old-looking warehouse; the overwhelming darkness of it only broke by a few weak patches of sunlight coming from two dirty windows, both three feet tall and located on overhead positions along the wall.
Stuffed with several dusty boxes, the warehouse could either imply a handy shelter or a tricky place where they could be isolated by the police force - however, they didn't exactly have many choices at the moment.
The quintet ran through the site's innards, forcefully having to run the risk and hope for the first option to turn out to be true.
***
After a minute or two, the group realized the Latino cop-boy hadn't broken into the warehouse behind them, and probably was waiting for reinforcements - which certainly couldn't mean anything fun, anyway.
"Who the hell are you people?" Michael asked in an unsettled murmur, his back leaning against one of the dusty boxes and his breath raspy.
The two time-travellers exchanged a brief glance, but the truth was they just didn't have the time to deal with this.
"Hey doc, don't go there right now," Faith's voice, if judged by an outsider's perspective, could have seemed either annoyed or somehow amused.
Now, Michael Penn wasn't exactly what one would call a courageous man. Crabby? Now and then, granted - his hard schedule actually made it almost a prerequisite in his profession.
Ill-tempered? Well, he'd had his moments indeed. Kelly had oftentimes been a victim of that.
Plus, occasional yelling at both at-blame and faultless co-workers was natural during the harder shifts at St Matthew's. Probably due to the harshness of so much blood, pain and, oftentimes, situations where all a doctor could do was watch helplessly as his patient's life slipped away.
But then again, it happened rarely with the wrong people - his superiors, for instance. Even when the young man could hate some decisions made by his bosses, he'd almost never gather up the courage to loudly complain about it. It just wasn't his nature to do such a thing.
And that was the reason why Kelly, co-worker, friend and some would swear something more now, felt suddenly breathless by Michael's unexpected outburst.
"You kidnap us, point a freaking gun in our faces and still, we're here saving your butts. So don't tell me not to go anywhere!" Penn exploded, his voice a barely repressed shout.
The Slayer and the former Zeppo could only exchange a look and a shrug. They seemed almost as surprised as Kelly by Michael's verbal explosion.
"Future pals, came back in time to do some Dead Boy staking, save the world and see if we can make some money on tomorrow's lottery numbers," Xander replied with jaded sarcasm. His attention wholly on the warehouse's main door, and his eyes never looking back into the doctor's ones.
"Look, cut the smart-ass bull, 'kay? I think we've earned some explanations - hey, if it wasn't for Nurse Marshall's help, right now you'd probably be lying on some table in the hospital morgue!"
Xander lifted his gun to aim at Michael's chest, out of pure instinct. Even when his intentions were for shutting up the young doctor and not actually shooting him, the young man felt an unsettling cold in his spine.
Anya whimpered at the unexpected act, and Faith just eyed her dark-haired ex-lover with great unease.
"Just stay quiet, alright? I, we, oh hell! We *really* don't have time for this right now, comprende? We don't have time, so just, ya know, just stay fricking quiet," Xander's voice was cracking up, and Faith and Anya easily noticed his effort to try to hide it.
It wasn't Xander's intention to act like such an asshole; but as previously said, both he and the brunette Slayer had too much on their minds right then.
Before a puzzled Michael could say anything at all, the young doctor felt a warm hand squeeze his smoothly. Turning around, he found his friend's widened orbs boring into his own blue eyes.
The sandy-haired man let out another weary sigh, his face showing dismay and unease, both for himself and for his curly-haired companion's life. Nurse Marshall offered him a gentle look, her eyes speaking volumes. Their hands, linked, tightened around each other considerably.
Anya, unusually quiet, did the same with Xander's hand. The young man, at first startled by the unanticipated pressure, then looked back at his fiancée with a small yet sad smile.
Eyeing the scene from her spot, Kelly just didn't know what to make of it.
Everything was really confused in the nurse's head right now, but it just couldn't enter into her mind how this scared man, who'd left the innocence of youth behind barely a few years earlier, could be all the TV had gone into so much detail about.
But that Cordelia girl confirmed it, the rational part of her mind remarked matter-of-factly, bringing chills to the curly-haired woman's insides. And besides, he is holding you as a hostage right now, isn't he? This time, wry sarcasm was included as well in its observation.
Faith anchored her arms and wrapped them around her body, a disconcerting feeling overtaking her being at the sight of the two couples.
It was hardly envy - the Slayer and loneliness had been best buds for practically an entire lifetime now. The two of them had walked hand-in-hand for almost every moment of her life, bar some rare Sunnydale ones.
"Don't wanna interrupt the little love-fest you people got going here, but we've gotta think of something to do about those cops - and we better do it fast," the brunette girl said sarcastically, her hard-ass shield moving promptly into place.
Anya's voice popped up, for the first time in several minutes. "Even though she's the first woman that my fiancé ever slept with, and she's with him during what should have been our honeymoon, and I'm thinking a lot about getting my former job back right now due to that, I think Faith has a point."
Michael, Kelly and even Faith had odd looks on their faces at hearing that statement.
After a pointed look directed at a fidgety Xander, the blonde woman continued her rant. This time with her expression harsher, "Not all cops are like Sunnydale's morons, Xander - the police will be here at any moment, and they have very nasty bullets that can injure you or parts of your body that I'd be really unhappy about losing."
Xander eyed the former demoness, as brutal images of the future came into his mind in the shape of an eternal, tormenting memento.
Anya looked more tense and jumpy than her usual jittery self, but he couldn't blame her for that. The young man couldn't even wonder at the confusion playing on his fiancé's mind right then.
One part of his mind, the one that was seeing all over again the future image of the blonde woman's vampiric self, just wished he'd managed to not involve her at all in this nightmare; but another guilty part of him found solace in her presence.
"Hey, no parts of me are getting lost here," Xander reassured her, playfully and even with a hint of boyish panic despite the situation.
"They better not," Anya snorted uneasily, feeling her heart twist at the sight of her fiancé's brown eyes and the frisky, brief grin on his lips.
Even though she'd so far just tried to shrug it away, the former demoness had a really bad feeling that she couldn't quite measure the nature of yet.
"Like I said, let's leave the cute 'n fuzzy stuff for later and move our asses," Faith interrupted forcefully, already moving further inside the warehouse in search of an alternate exit.
Penn and Marshall smartly followed the Slayer, and after some more briefly exchanged words of reassurance, Sunnydale's couple did so as well.
But then, the strangest thing happened. Xander felt his whole world going black and, while the warehouse became a very vague background, another place - a misty one - got stronger and stronger in his eyes.
The former Zeppo didn't hear the freshly arrived policemen's shouts at the quintet to hold it right there, or Faith's loud curse upon that happening; because for a fleeting second, he wasn't in the warehouse anymore.
Rather, he was somewhere completely different.
And standing in front of him with a white robe and wide hazel eyes, there was a girl whose face had once been the entire focus of his thoughts as a teenager.
"Hey Xander," the brunette greeted him playfully, a perky grin on her lips.
After a puzzled sigh, Xander's lips made a grin too, despite everything.
"Hey, Cordy. Can't get enough of the Xand-man action, huh? Women do tend to find it addictive," he replied mockingly, walking in her direction with his hands loose in his jacket's pockets, shaking his head in a somehow amused daze.
"Dream on, dorkhead," the seer retorted laughingly. The brunette's pretty features tensed at the next phrase though, "The PTB have a important message for ya, Xander. I'm just the messenger here..."
***
I really need a push to post more chapters, but you people just seem to have forgot me :-( Review!