55
Since she had been summoned by Angel himself, Rose didn't think it necessary to have Harmony announce her presence. Harmony had other ideas.
"Just where do you think you're going?" she demanded, moving to stand between Rose and the door.
"Angel called me and asked me to come see him," Rose replied. What in the world was wrong with the girl? She'd hardly had a civil word for Rose since she'd arrived.
"I'm his assistant," Harmony replied, nose in the air. "Don't you think I'd know who Angel wants to see, or not?"
"I'm not in a position to know just what information Angel gives you," Rose pointed out reasonably. "All I know is that he wanted to see me, and you're keeping me waiting out here." She tried stepping around Harmony, but dizzy or not, Harm still had a vampire's reflexes, and kept Rose from reaching the door.
"Think you're something special, do you?" she hissed. "Wesley thinks you're a wonder, you've got Lorne wrapped around your finger, and now you're hobnobbing with the boss. And if all that isn't bad enough, you stand right in the middle of the lobby drooling over my Blondie Bear."
"Blondie Bear?" Rose had never heard the nickname. But it didn't take her long to figure out who Harmony was talking about. "You mean Spike?"
"Just how many guys were you mooning over this morning?" Harm fussed. "Of course I mean Spike. If it hadn't been for you, he would have eventually come to his senses and come back to me. But now you've ruined everything."
Rose decided that this was an argument that she really didn't want to get into. "Harmony, I need to get in to see Angel. And if you'll pardon me saying so, this isn't exactly the sort of discussion to be having during working hours."
As Harmony opened her mouth to say something the door to the office opened. "Harmony when.., oh, there you are, Rose, come in." And Angel escorted Rose into his office leaving a steaming Harmony standing with no one upon whom to vent her anger.
Rose contained herself until Angel had seated her, and then took a seat himself. "Blondie Bear?" She giggled. And then the giggle turned to out and out laughter, and she laughed until there were tears in her eyes.
Angel had grinned at the allusion at first, but then his expression became more serious. "Was Harmony giving you a bad time over Spike?" he asked.
"Trying to," she answered, wiping her eyes. "Did she and Spike.., well, I mean, were they..," A look of total incredulity swept over her features. "Harmony and Spike?"
Angel waved his hand dismissively. "That was over a long time ago. And to be truthful, I don't think Harmony actually wants anything to do with Spike on a romantic level anymore. She just doesn't want anyone else to, either." He leaned back in his chair. "I certainly can't imagine Harmony dealing with the restrictions that come from having a romance with a disembodied spirit. She probably just wants to imagine that Spike will go till the end of days pining away for her. If he's seeing someone else, that destroys the illusion."
"If that's supposed to be an explanation, it didn't help," Rose remarked. "I haven't got the faintest notion of what that all means. It's so.., convoluted it makes me dizzy just trying to follow it. But that isn't why you wanted to see me, is it?"
"No," Angel replied. "But if Harmony gets out of line, I want you to promise to tell me." He gave Rose a stern look. "Promise?"
"I promise," Rose sighed. "But really, Angel, Harmony isn't going to..,"
"You don't know that," he interrupted. "And just remember that you promised. Why didn't you tell me that you were doing research to try to find a way to resurrect Spike?"
"I wasn't sure if you would approve my using Wolfram and Hart materials on a purely personal project," Rose muttered a little shamefacedly. "But I did think it would be a good idea to consider the other options, just in case."
"I understand," Angel said. "But if you had told me about it, I could have, and will, give you access to files that you normally wouldn't be able to see. Did you think that the files you work with were everything that Wolfram and Hart has?"
"It never occurred to me," Rose mumbled. "I'm still having trouble grasping a lot of the nuances of being human. Especially secrets, even though I have to keep them myself. It's just not like that.., there."
"What is it like?" Angel queried. Curiosity aside, any information acquired about The Powers would be of inestimable value.
"All of us are.., sort of connected," Rose tried to explain something totally inhuman in human terms. "We always know what each of us is thinking, so there are no such things as secrets there. There can't be. And it's one of the reasons that I've been having difficulty assimilating." She remembered something else. "I'm not sure whether he was joking or not, but if he wasn't, Spike has some suspicions about me."
"What kind of suspicions?" Angel himself would never have guessed if she hadn't told him. But of course, Spike had spent a lot more time with her.
"He said that he wondered what I was," Rose murmured, remembering. "At one point, he even made a guess that I was an angel, except, he said, that an angel wouldn't have anything to do with him. But he said that he thought that I was more than human, and that I was too good to be true." She gave Angel a thoughtful look. "You know him better than anyone, Liam. Do you think he really meant it? Or was it just his way of paying me a compliment?"
Angel shook his head. "I may know Spike better than anyone, Rose, but that just means that I know how unpredictable he can be. Do you think it would make any difference to him? Knowing how he feels about you?"
"I know how he feels about me," Rose replied softly. "But I also know his opinions about us.., The Powers That Be, I mean. And to put it mildly, it isn't a very high opinion."
"I hate to say this," Angel murmured gently. "Will his opinion mean anything by the time he finds out? I mean, won't you be going back? You're not planning on telling him before that, are you?"
"I can't," Rose said sadly. "I shouldn't have even told you, but I had to tell someone. I'm sorry that I dumped it all on you, Angel."
Angel shrugged. "I'm used to it. And it is a pretty big secret to have to keep. Sometimes you need to have someone you can talk to that knows about your secrets and accepts you anyway." He stopped for a long, thoughtful moment. "Why can you tell me, and not Spike?"
"I'm afraid of getting his hopes up," Rose replied. "I want him to have a body, to be a person again, but as determined as I am to find a way, the chances seem to be dwindling. I couldn't face him after disappointing him like that."
Angel grabbed a piece of paper and pen and began writing. He handed the paper to Rose. "Here are the access codes to the classified information. Don't let anyone else see it, or use it. There are things there that even Wesley would have to ask permission to view," he informed her. Then, he got a mystified look on his face. "Shouldn't you know this already? Like being able to pull that stuff about the Amalyar demon out of thin air."
"Without trying to be insulting," Rose said. "There is a limited amount of space in a human brain. I had to choose carefully, remembering what I needed for the job I had to get, not to mention most of the things that an adult human has known so much of their life that it almost seems like instinct. Plus, leaving room to learn new things. So no, I don't know everything, and right now, I don't even have any powers. I'm just as human as anyone you might meet on the street. I can't even contact my peers, I have to wait for them to contact me."
Angel stood. "I've kept you long enough. Wesley is probably frothing at the mouth by now. Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help."
"You've already been more help than I could ever have anticipated." Rose stood also. As she started towards the door, she turned, a look of dismay and confusion on her face. "You were just joking about Wesley, weren't you?"
&&&&&&&
Harmony, thankfully was nowhere in sight when Rose emerged from Angel's office. She started her journey back to the research department, but rounding a corner, bumped into a slight figure wearing a lab coat and carrying a stack of papers that went everywhere.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Rose apologized. "Fred, isn't it? I don't believe I've seen you since my first day when Wesley was taking me around." She bent down to help reorganize the chaos, first tucking the paper she had gotten from Angel in her pocket to keep it from getting lost in the welter.
"I'm the one who should be sorry," Fred answered. "I'm always off in another world, not really paying attention to where I am." She took a good look at Rose. "I think I remember meeting you. But didn't you have longer hair?"
"Demon's blood can be hard on the appearance." Rose grinned at her. "Not to mention the wardrobe."
"You're telling me," Fred said with heartfelt sincerity. "I guess you've really been thrown in the deep end here, haven't you?"
"I guess I have," Rose replied, gathering up the last of Fred's papers and handing them to her. The two women stood. "It was nice seeing you again, Fred, but I've been away from my desk long enough."
"I understand," Fred replied. "Wesley can be something of a slave-driver sometimes." A shadow passed over Fred's face momentarily, and Rose remembered that Fred had once been a slave. "Well, see ya later." Fred went on her way, and Rose went on hers.
Surprisingly, from Rose's point of view, Wesley wasn't hovering around her office waiting to hear what she had been up to. She sat down at her computer and got to work. Her official work. The other, well, that could wait until her lunch break, or whenever.
&&&&&&
Wesley was walking down the hallway outside of Rose's office talking to Gunn when a piercing scream came from inside the office. The two men burst into the office, each producing weapons that they had concealed about their persons. They saw Rose, flattened against a wall with a look of sheer terror on her face.
"Rose?" Wesley went towards her cautiously, weapon still at the ready, and looking around. He didn't see anything that would have produced such a reaction. "What happened, Rose? What's wrong?"
Rose, eyes wide with terror, pointed at her computer. Wesley wondered if she had already snapped from the pressure, or if perhaps something she had read had had this effect on her. Some of the research texts could be pretty gruesome.
Gunn walked over to the desk, and instead of the monitor, looked at the keyboard and saw the cause of the disturbance. "Wow, that's a pretty big one," he remarked. He stashed his weapon, then chased the spider into his cupped hand. He left the room.
Wesley allowed himself a mental sigh of relief. Vampires, ghosts and demons she could handle, but apparently his assistant was phobic about spiders. "It's all right now, Rose," he said soothingly. "It's gone now."
"Are you sure there aren't any more?" Rose hadn't as yet budged an inch. "I was just sitting there working, and it.., it dropped down in front of me." She was so pale she could give the vampires a run for their money.
Gunn stepped back in. "I, uh, got rid of it." He grinned sheepishly, and Wes suddenly had a good idea what had happened to the spider. There was a washroom just a couple of doors down. Gunn took a look at Rose. "Damn, she's a whiter shade of pale if I ever saw one." Since Rose still seemed rooted to the spot, he wheeled her chair over to her and got her sat down. "Are you going to be all right?"
"I think so," Rose muttered, suddenly feeling an acute attack of embarrassment. Everything that she had done since she had been here and to be frightened half to death by such a small, harmless creature. But.., ugh! She shuddered.
Spike suddenly appeared. "Sorry to interrupt your busy day, luv," he began, then he saw Rose, really saw her, her pallor, Wes and Gunn hovering around concernedly. "What happened?"
"A spider dropped onto her computer keyboard and.., er.., startled her," Wesley explained.
Gunn was in Spike's way, so he walked right through him, and knelt in front of Rose. "Sweetheart?" he said tentatively. "Rose, talk to me, babe."
She managed a shaky smile. "I feel like such an idiot." She looked at the three men around her. "I'm sorry I caused so much trouble." She spoke as to the group, but she was looking at Spike when she said it.
Gunn glanced at Wesley, and Wesley cocked his head toward the door, and the two of them left.
"You're not an idiot, pet," Spike said softly. He neither knew nor cared that their audience had departed. "But I'll be damned if I can figure you out. Didn't turn a hair when faced with a big, nasty demon covered with barnacles, but you go into hysterics over a little bitty spider."
"It was enormous," Rose stated stubbornly. "And I didn't have any warning. Besides, it was just so.., creepy."
Spike finally noticed that the others had left. "You want me to have a quick look around here, pet? Make sure the big, nasty eight-legged thingy didn't have a family?"
"Please," Rose breathed.
&&&&&&&
As they resumed their journey through the halls and corridors of the huge building, Wesley began telling Gunn about Rose's encounter with the Amalyar demon. The expurgated version, since that was all he'd heard. Rose hadn't mentioned the part about Angel cutting her clothes off.
Gunn seemed to listen intently enough, but when Wes finished the narrative, it seemed that only one fact of the whole story had stuck in his head. "She had a date with Spike?"
&&&&&&
"All clear, luv." Spike finished his search of the office. "No more spiders laying in wait to terrorize you."
"Why were you here?" Rose finally had her wits about her. "I thought we'd agreed that you weren't going to be around me while I'm working."
"I know," Spike mumbled, a little shamefaced. "I just had to see you for a minute. Couldn't wait till this afternoon to see you." He gave her a dazzling smile. "Just had to pop in and tell you that I love you."
The smile was what did it. It absolutely melted Rose's heart. "I love you, too," she replied, returning the smile. "Now why don't you be good and let me get some work done?"
"I'll be good," Spike promised. He faded out till nothing was left but his smile. He reappeared for a moment. "Well, I'll be damned. I did it." Then, he was gone.