TRYING THIS AGAIN
NOTE: I don't own Angel or Buffy but I will gladly take position of them if Joss ever takes the big plunge.
A/N: I came up with this story talking to one of my friends. It just hit me in the head somehow. Anyway, here's the rundown. This takes place during what should be the eighth season of Buffy and the fifth season of Angel. Angel finally succeeds in saving the world so he is given the chance of a lifetime and I don't just mean W&H law offices. You'll see. Well, please enjoy.
CHAPTER 4Leah brushed her long, chestnut brown hair, standing in front of her full-length mirror. Looking into it she got a good look at herself: short, pale complexioned teenager with a hint of red in her cheeks. She had spent most of that afternoon locked in her room, trying to study. But somehow she had found time to grumble about her pain in the neck father. Leah clicked off the light and crawled into bed, stomach down, snuggled under the blanket, gripping her teddy bear, one her father had given her.
She had only been asleep for a few minutes before opening her eyes to the inky darkness; idly she wondered what exactly had just woken her up. Leah glanced towards her window and saw what looked like a burning, blue light, almost like the hottest part of the fire around the edges.. Climbing out of her bed, she slowly went towards the window, the light reflecting off her blue eyes.
"Ooh, pretty," she whispered in awe. In the blink of an eye the light was gone again. "Ooh, not so pretty."
The next morning Wesley, Willow, and Leah sat around the kitchen. Willow buttered some toast at the stove; Wesley did his usual of drinking coffee and reading the newspapers. Leah sat quietly, eating a bowl of cereal, no milk, thinking about the previous night.
"Hey, Mum, Dad?" Willow and Wesley turned their attention to her. "Just out of curious, did either of you happen to notice a really, really gorgeous light outside last night? I mean when I first saw it I..." Leah noticed she was getting funny looks from them. "Right. It was, um, a car... I think."
"Honey, maybe you should go to bed early tonight," Willow said, taking a seat at the table with her toast.
"Yes, I agree," Wesley nodded slowly.
Leah also nodded. "Yeah, but too bad that's out of the question this afternoon. I have baby-sitting duty at Buffy and Angel's house. Aunt Buff said he's been acting kinda weird so she's taking him somewhere or whatever. But I'm thinking she's taking him to a hotel to get their freak on."
Wesley turned away from his breakfast and stared daggers at her.
Willow hid a smile.
"Leah Dana Whydham-Pryce," Wesley chided, clearly not amused by her word choice.
"I... I... uh..." Leah squirmed in her seat. "Not that I know anything about that kind of thing." She chuckled nervously. "You know. I'm just a little girl after all." Leah smiled so innocently a halo could have appeared over her head.
"I better not ever hear such things coming out of your mouth again," Wesley warned.
Usually Leah would argue but she knew how Wesley could be when it came to talking about sex. In his mind she would always be his sweet, innocent little virgin, but of course if she had in her way, some devilishly handsome man would sweep her off her feet and they would leave the Hellmouth for more exciting activities.
Leah arrived at the Angel household later that afternoon; headphones placed on her ears, blasting the usual music, a mix of pop, rock, and punk. Buffy invited her in, gave her the usual rules and numbers before practically dragging Angel out of the house.
Leah turned to Rachel, who sat on the living room couch, watching TV. "Hey, Chelly," Leah smiled, using Lorne's name for the little girl. She took the headphones off her ears and shut her CD player off. "What are you up for?"
Rachel shrugged. "Nothing."
Leah shrugged as well. "Fine then." She put back on the headphones, switched on the music, and danced her way into the kitchen to see what tasty items Buffy and Angel had left for her in the fridge.
Angel and Buffy walked down the streets of their neighborhood, Buffy with her arm slipped through his. Angel's eyes floated around to things that he seemed to know, yet didn't. He remained quiet, as did Buffy.
"All right," Buffy said, finally breaking the silence. "Angel, let me try out this honesty thing. I'm worried about you."
Angel looked down at her. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it's just that ever since that night we went patrolling you've been..." Buffy trailed off as they sat down on a bench in the park. "You've been kind of nutty-esque. I know that's normal for you but not this much."
"A lot has been happening," Angel sighed.
Buffy sat on one of her knees on the bench, looking at him, her elbow resting on the head of the bench. "Like what? Things are as normal as Sunnydale gets, it's almost boring."
"That's just it. What am I doing in Sunnydale?"
"Here we go with this again," Buffy groaned.
"Yes, this!" Angel suddenly snapped, standing up. "None of this is supposed to be this way. You're not supposed to be here, we don't have Rachel, we don't have this big, flashy business, nothing is right!"
Buffy stood as well. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Angel ignored her and continued his rant. "I don't understand it! These things don't happen to me, no matter what good I do."
"Not so much with the sane are you, Angel?" Buffy asked him, giving him a skeptical look.
"You're not listening!" Angel shouted at her.
"Now you're yelling at me. Oh, yeah, we're definitely married," Buffy said nonchalantly. Angel turned away from her then. Buffy sighed. "Look, I'm sorry." She gave him a little hug from the back. "I know you're going through a thing but I can't exactly help unless you tell me what's going on." She thought humor was in order then. "Or, you know, I could always have Willow teach me the magical, mind reading thing. That always could be fun."
Angel turned back to her, a hint of a smile on his face. "This is real, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Buffy humored him. "I'm going to say it is."
Angel suddenly leaned in and kissed her.
Buffy, taken by surprise, kissed him back.
Across the street Spike and Anya walked, Spike's arm around her waist. They watched the kissing couple as they passed by the park.
"Those two are disgusting," Anya commented.
"Rather," Spike added.
"Look at them, making out in public like that... and enjoying it so much." Anya turned to him with a serious expression on her face. "Can we do that later?"
"Yeah, sure," Spike shrugged as they continued to walk.
Cordelia sat in her living room in an armchair, a large photo album propped up on top of her belly. She flipped through it slowly, page by page. Cordelia turned to the first page again.
"OK, baby, Mommy has a new story for you," she said to her belly sweetly. Cordelia looked at the photo album again. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful cheerleader who lived in Sunnydale and could have any boy she wanted. Then one day she met a complete dork but fell for him nonetheless. Anyway, another day the beautiful cheerleader and the complete dork broke up, leaving the complete dork in heartache. The beautiful cheerleader, who wasn't a cheerleader anymore, moved to LA, killed a bunch of vamps, came back to Sunnydale and married the complete dork, who wasn't a complete dork anymore and they lived happily ever after." Cordy showed her belly a picture of Xander and herself smiling under a doorway. "The end." She rubbed her stomach lovingly. "Did you like that? You want to hear the one about the cheerleader winning team captain?"
Before Cordelia had a chance to go wander through memory lane, she suddenly gasped as a vision hit. Behind her eyes she saw what looked like a form of light flashing but that was it. The vision ended quickly before she could get a good look at anything. Xander entered the living room to see the iris of Cordelia's eyes go from white to brown. He rushed over to her.
"Cordy, what was it?" Xander questioned. "A vision? Come on, talk to me."
"Uh, give me a chance to actually answer you," she said, looking at him crossly. "Yeah, it was a vision but I'm thinking it was a gag or something."
Xander looked confused and blinked a few times. "What?" he finally said.
"It was a practical joke, it had to be," Cordelia told him again. "There was this flashy stuff and then... more flashy stuff. And then it went dark, sort of like a movie theater."
"Oh." He shrugged. "I guess it was. That's happened before, right?"
"Bogus visions? Yeah, I guess so. Maybe the Powers that sit on their asses all day while other people do their jobs are losing their minds."
"Probably." Xander softened and put a gentle hand to her arm. "Are you hungry? You need anything?"
"Uh, cookies would be good," Cordelia replied, her crossness instantly forgotten, both with her husband and the lousy powers that be. Xander nodded and headed towards the kitchen. "Nothing with cherry!" she called after him. Turning back to her stomach and the photo album, Cordelia smiled softly. "Now where was I? Oh, right. Well, the auditions for cheerleader captain were tight but the beautiful cheerleader knew she could do it."
Rachel bounced around the living room, pretty hyper since Leah had given her six scoops of ice cream with sprinkles. Leah sat on the couch, watching the younger girl jump around, eating the ice cream she had prepared for herself.
"Hey, Chelly, exactly how much of a sugar rush can you get?" Leah asked.
"I don't know!" Rachel replied loudly, jumping as she said each word. Jumping into a chair, she then leapt over to the couch. "Whoop!"
Leah looked startled. "Um, Rachel, turn it down a notch, 'kay?"
Rachel ignored her and started jumping everywhere in the room, running out of it. "Yee-haw!"
Leah shook her head and ran after her. "Rachel! Hold up." She heard something smash then ran into the dining room, only to see that Rachel had accidentally broken some type of large lamp.
Leah groaned, swore softly, and continued after Rachel. As she ran she wondered who would be in the most trouble. Rachel, for being destructive or Leah, for giving her the sugar that made the five year old so destructive. Leah eventually tracked Rachel down into the basement.
"Rachel, I—" Leah started. She stared down at Rachel, who seemed to be focused on something. "What are you looking at?" she asked.
Rachel pointed at a corner of the basement. "Look," she said softly.
Leah's eyes followed the little girl's finger and looked over towards the corner Rachel pointed at. Something seemed to radiate from it and slowly another blue, sparkling light formed. The teenager slowly took a step towards it but the light flashed directly into her eyes, nearly blinding her for a couple of seconds and pushing her back. Rachel gasped. Leah picked her up and ran towards the stairs.
"Come on, Rachel," Leah panicked. "We have to find Aunt Buff and Uncle Angel," she said, still using the aunt and uncle names she had given them when she was younger, and the only child.
As Leah and Rachel made it back up to the living room they saw Angel and Buffy walk through the front door. Buffy smiled when she saw Leah come up, Rachel in her arms.
"Hey, thanks for watching her," the slayer said then got a good look at Leah's face. "She wasn't that bad was she?"
"Guys," Leah panted. "There's something down there."
"Down where?" Buffy asked her.
"Basement!" Leah exclaimed, setting Rachel down gently.
Buffy still looked confused as she turned to Angel. "I'll go check it out. You stay with them." She headed in the direction of the basement.
Rachel went over to Angel's legs. "The pretty light scared me."
Angel looked down and felt an instinct to pick her up. "It's OK," he attempted to sooth, albeit awkwardly.
Rachel hugged him around the neck a little. "Glad you're home, Daddy."
Buffy walked back up to the small group then. "All I saw was a broken lamp, nothing else." She raised an eyebrow at Leah and Rachel. Leah silently pointed at Rachel. "Rachel..."
"It was an accident," Rachel whispered into Angel's shirt.
"We can get a new lamp," Angel suggested to Buffy, patting Rachel's back every minute or so.
"Fine," Buffy shrugged but was surprised at Angel's firmness towards her.
A/N: This chapter was supposed to be here sooner but something is wrong with my Microsoft Word. So you have to review me because I'm really sad about that. But I want to thank my friend Pyro Bear for editing this for me. *Gives Pyro cookie*