Disclaimer- The only character I own here is Rowan herself; the rest I borrow.

Summary- This takes place before Cordelia becomes part demon and before Connor is born.

Chapter Eight

I Whine When I'm Tired, or the Rest of the Story Comes Out (Almost)

Angel sighed, deeply and long. "And her being a vampire couldn't possibly be sheer coincidence?"

Rowan pursed her lips. "What do you think?" she asked tiredly.

Leaning back in his seat, Angel tiredly rubbed at his eyes. "Is there a frickin' thing in my life that wasn't either fate or stupidity?"

Rowan pushed the sleeve of her bulky sweatshirt up. "Surprisingly, yes."

"I don't want to know."

"Don't want to know what it was, or how I know this?" Rowan chirped. Sometimes having the Second Sight could be fun.

Angel rose from his chair and starting pacing the small room again. "How did she become a vampire, and where is she now?"

"Well," Rowan began, biting her lower lip. "She got caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time. My grandmother wasn't aware of the circumstances of her death until it was too late. Something along the lines of the cobbler's shoeless children."

"For a family of witches, you certainly seem to have a particular blind spot for your own fates," Angel pondered aloud, pausing between Rowan and the door.

Rowan acknowledged his statement with a nod. "That's true. We don't often know what is going to happen in our own lives. That's one of the reasons why I was so nervous coming here. I couldn't See how it was going to turn out."

Angel's change in posture told Rowan immediately that she had chosen the wrong thing to say. His attention was once again focused on how to prove her story was the truth. "Rather convenient, your mother becoming a vampire. At least I know that I didn't turn her- I haven't made a fledging in over a hundred years."

Again Rowan pursed her lips. "No, you haven't." She debated her next words internally for a moment before deciding what the hell. "But your Sire has."

Angel sat down in the seat next Rowan with a thud. "Isn't this story tangled enough as it is?"

"No, it gets a lot more tangled." Rowan debated giving him the details now or later.

Angel read her mind. "Spit it all out now, kid- even I don't live forever. You have until the gang returns to convince me. And they won't take much longer."

"My father was Merrick, you were never meant to lose you soul with Buffy, and my grandmother died returning your soul to you." Angel's eyes widened and narrowed in shock and disbelief as the words passed her lips. Rowan almost smiled in satisfaction. She was tired, and cranky, and Angel had simply pushed her too far.

Angel folded his arms. "Yeah, well, is there anything else you left out?"

Rowan rose and headed for the door. "No, I think that's it. Since my story is done, I'm headed back to bed. Wake me in the morning." She was halfway across the lobby before Angel realized what happened. He followed her quickly.

Muttering under her breath about ungrateful vampires, Rowan ignored Angel as he caught up with her and continued up the lobby stairs.

"You can't drop a bomb like that and leave! And I told you, you only have until the others get back to convince me. And if you can't convince me, you can't convince them. If they don't believe you, you're outta here."

Rowan, thoroughly tired of the whole mess by now and questioning- again- why she had come out here, shrugged. "Oh, well. Maybe I don't care anymore." She continued down the corridor to her room while Angel stopped dead at her reply.

He quickly caught up with her, catching the door in his hand as she tried to shut it behind her. Rowan eyed him as he forced it open an entered her room. Angel looked directly at her, and his tone changed. Sarcasm and distrust seemingly gone, he pleaded, "Please tell me the rest."

Rowan sat down on the bed and pulled the pillow up into her lap. "You don't believe a word I say, and telling this story isn't easy. I can't prove anything to you by talking."

"Maybe I don't need proof right now. Maybe I just need the rest of the story," Angel spoke in a tight, harsh voice.

Rowan attributed the strain to her mention of Buffy. "Do you REALLY want to know?" She searched his pale face for an indication of sincerity, but all those years of life had given him the ability to mask his deepest emotional reactions.

Angel sat himself at the foot of her bed and nodded. "Yes, I do want to know. We'll forget about proof for a while, and I'll just listen."

Rowan leaned back against the headboard and nodded. "Okay. Darla turned my mother. My grandmother only became aware of my mother's fate after you had killed Darla. My mother knew what happened to her Sire, and she came after my grandmother and me, since we were the closest she would ever get to hurting you. Mother knew that you were too powerful for her to take."

Angel briefly closed his eyes. "But she didn't succeed, if I killed your grandmother."

Rowan was impressed. He had listened to her words, whether or not he had really wanted to hear them. "Right. When she came after us, my grandmother used magic to protect us. Gram couldn't kill her own daughter, though- vampire or not. She imprisoned my mother in our basement, while she tried to find a spell to give her daughter back a soul. Gram was sure that the daughter she remembered would return if her soul was restored. My grandmother worked for months on a spell."

Angel shifted his position, pulling one darkly clad leg under the other. In a low voice Rowan had to strain to hear, Angel asked, "Did she succeed?"

Rowan nodded, her long hair bouncing with the movement. "It took her months, and a tremendous amount of power, but she managed."

"How was your mother once her soul returned?" Angel asked, looking off into the unlit corners of the room.

"You know how it feels, to have your soul back and remember the terror and horror and death that you had caused." Rowan paused, remembering the days she had spent talking to that evil thing inhabiting her mother's body, trying to get her to remember anything good about their life together, but only getting stories about blood and pain and death. Even her Gram's consoling words and memories of her own couldn't clean Rowan's mind of the demon's words.

"My mother was never that strong a person to begin with, from what I could gather from Gram's stories about her. My mother never liked the whole witch legacy we had going, and ran away when she was sixteen to avoid the responsibilities." Rowan neglected to mention that she herself had considered the same plan of action on more than one occasion as a teenager. "The vampire memories broke her. Once her soul returned, my Gram felt it was safe to leave her unchained." Rowan's voice became flat and emotionless. "My mother took an early morning stroll the first change she got."

Angel shook his head. "Not a pleasant way to die. Staking is so much faster."

Rowan watched his face as he looked at a far-off point. "My grandmother felt responsible. It wasn't an easy time for us. What made it worse was you."

Angel frowned. "What do you mean?"

"While Gram's attention was elsewhere, you went evil again." Rowan blew air at her bangs to move them away from her eyes. "Again, she felt that if she had been doing her job, that never would have happened. And she decided to try and fix it."

Angel looked perplexed. "But Willow restored my soul, with a Romany spell."

Rowan licked her lips. "The Powers played a very cruel trick on my grandmother. She and Willow chose the same moment to fix your soullessness. The magics were too different, though- one had to fail." She rubbed her tired eyes. "Romany magic is very powerful, even wielded by someone else."

He rose from the bed, walking to the window and pausing to stare out. "What happened to her?"

"Her heart failed. The competing magics slowed Willow down just enough that it was too late to keep you from calling Alcaltha." Rowan pulled her sweatpants clad legs up to her chest. "I found her. I didn't know what happened until I had read her journal, saw what she had planned. She never told me what she was going to do."

The last statement came out more bitter than Rowan had intended, and Angel picked up on it immediately. "You would have stopped her?"

Rowan pulled a long strand of hair into her mouth, sucking on it in a nervous tick from her childhood. "I don't know. I could at least have helped her with it- maybe saved her."

Angel strode over and sat next to her on the bed. "So, not only am I your only family who knows about the dark side of life, I also killed your last human family member." He turned to look at her. His voice cracked a little as he spoke. "And you came here to meet me why?"

Rowan struggled to calm the inner turmoil this draining storytelling had started. It was a difficult task, the hour was late, and she just couldn't do it. Looking up at Angel with a tear in her eye, she answered him with complete honesty. "I was lonely."