A/N: One more after this. Bear with me. Thank you all so much for the reviews! They mean the world to me.

A Face Through a Window

The silence was not comfortable, and it was not companionable. It was heavy, and she watched Connor openly, as he watched her. He was dressed like a typical teenager, jeans and a faded gray t-shirt. But there was something in his eyes, a sorrow or heavy knowledge, and she had to say something, because it the smells of the room were killing her. She was neck-deep in memories that weren't even her own, and she knew Connor felt it too.

"Were you around when Angel got turned into a puppet?"

The weary eyes snapped to hers immediately, widening. Then he burst into hysterical laughter. "A puppet?"

"He looked a little like the Count. You know, from Sesame Street. Our first date was that day."

"You went on a date with a puppet?"

"It was complicated."

"We sang karaoke once. 'Mandy'." At her incredulous look, he shrugged. "Higher power took us over."

"Higher powers like Manilow?"

"No. Angel did," he said, and then he was moving, his hand dipping into the box and face peering into it. Then, almost triumphantly, he pulled out a record and handed it to her. "See?"

Barry Manilow smiled up at her from the cover slip of the vinyl. She snickered. "Wow. Good taste in cars. Not in music."

Connor wasn't listening anymore; he had dug something else out of the box- a crumpled sheet of off-white paper- and was staring at it. She craned her neck to get a better look. He noticed, and the spell that had bound him to the paper was broken. He shoved it at her.

It was a drawing, soft pencil lines blurred by the crumpling of the paper. But it was easy to see that the woman was gorgeous, light haired with sad eyes, still young despite the lines that had worked themselves into her face. "She's beautiful," Nina said, wondering if it was Angel's Roman friend with the annoying name.

"She was my mother."

Not the Roman then. "Angel knew your family?"

"Angel was my family."

"Oh," she said, and that was all she could say for the moment. The next thing she thought to say was, "I thought vampires couldn't have children."

"There was a prophecy…" he trailed off, his eyes not looking at her, then visibly shook himself out of the trance. "It was a whole big thing."

"You look like her." Nina handed the drawing back to him.

He studied the picture carefully, as though seeing her for the first time. "More like her than him."

"I bet they made one hell of a couple."

Connor's lips turned up in a bitter grin; it looked out of place on his young face. But he didn't argue, instead just saying, "I bet you did too."

"You think they're together, wherever they are? Angel and…"

"Darla." He was silent for a moment. "I don't know. A part of me hopes so."

The silence they lapsed into after that was different. Not quite comfortable, but Nina felt more at ease as they both began digging things out of the big cardboard box. It was as if she was looking through his life before Wolfram and Hart- she wasn't deluded enough to say 'before her'- and it was like staring through a window back in time. Little mementos filled the box to the brim; a ticket stub to the ballet, a miniature hockey stick, a picture of Angel with a baby she could only assume was Connor, and a thousand other little things that made up Angel the man, not Angel the hero or Angel the CEO. It was like she could see him, in the pattern the knickknacks made as she and Connor spread them around the floor in front of them. And it was somehow comforting to have him there, if only through things he'd left behind.

After all, mementos are all that's left behind when vampires die. Except dust.