Disclaimer: you know how it goes, I don't own Angel or Spike, I only own the ones in my bio. Thanks to all who provided inspiration for this (you may not know that you did) and many many thanks to Tsukiroketto, Queen of the rants!
Please to all who read this, I need to know that my story is being read a review would be much appreciated even if it's only a 'very good' or something like that. All reviews are appreciated! R&R! Enjoy!
Chapter 6: Una pelea de la familia (A fight of the family)
The next morning, Bren woke to an empty room full of beds that had been made hours ago. She dressed lazily and made her way out to the kitchen where breakfast waited. Bren was surprised when she entered the dining room to find every member of the crew present and looking as miserable as she felt remembering the events of last night.
"I see the voodoo dolls didn't work, any other ideas people?" Bren said making an attempt at brightening the mood, it wouldn't do to have this attitude when they were fighting Mara.
Only Spike smiled at the feeble joke which was quite out of character for him, this put Bren off as she sat down between her twin and Zev to eat her cereal. Angel looked across the table at her and she made sure that she didn't look tired anymore, a difficult task when her eyes were still bleary and her hair was all over the place. She didn't want to be kept back from anything that they might be doing over the next few days just because she still looked tired. Although she knew that they wouldn't be doing anything tonight it was a very big possibility that they would be seeing some action the night after. Seemingly satisfied that Bren wasn't too tired to do much when it was needed Angel returned to his previous task with Seth at the lap top. Bren relaxed and turned her attention to the bowl in front of her, struggling to fit even that small amount in her stomach with out making herself sick, that was the last thing that she needed right now.
An hour later and everyone was still sitting around the breakfast table and looking miserable. Bren had left briefly to fix her hair so that it wasn't in her face and knotty from sleep but she'd come back five minutes after leaving.
Looking around him Angel decided that it wouldn't do to have a crew with this attitude fighting Mara, she'd already have half won if they fought her like this. They needed something to take their minds off the project for a while, everyone had been working so hard this week that Angel was surprised they weren't dead from exhaustion.
"All of you go and get into your bikinis or boardies or what ever you wear swimming, you're going to the beach to have some fun," He said forcefully. "But Angel how could we possibly have fun when we know that some day or night soon we're going to have to face Mara?" Trixie asked, "She's as purely evil as a mortal can get and when you fight her the only rule she has is that there are no rules."
"I think that the whole point of the exercise is to take your mind off the project for a while," Spike said showing an amazing amount of insight as to what his vampirely grand sire had said.
Angel frowned at the younger vampire, surprised that Spike had known what he'd been thinking by saying that.
Spike shrugged, "I've been around you for what, 120, 130 years? I can't have gone that long in your annoying presence and not learn something about your sappy thoughts."
The non-vampire members of the crew smiled at Spike's explanation that was the Spike that they knew and occasionally found it in their hearts to be nice to. They usually didn't act friendly around Spike for a number of reasons, for one he was likely to toss them off the next bridge he found for being sissies, he would explain later that they'd needed to wash the stench off to be in his supreme presence. If this was anyone else this behaviour would have been considered weird but this wasn't someone else, it was Spike and no one could change that.
"So why are we sitting here if we're supposed to be at the beach?" Taft asked, "Shouldn't we be getting into our swimmers and heading down?"
"That's the spirit," Angel encouraged, standing up and beginning to shoo his young friends along, "Go on, I want all of you out on the beach and having fun before ten thirty that gives you half an hour, hurry now."
The crew left the table, some of them mumbling and grumbling in protest but they didn't want to disappoint Angel. He new their reasons for going and he was grateful to them for everything that they had done for him over the past few years, whether they'd been asked to or had done so without prompting.
Looking at Spike, Angel knew that he couldn't go down to the beach but he still wanted the younger vampire to relax a bit. He was just trying to think of a way to get him to do this without giving him a command that he knew Spike wouldn't obey when Spike provided a solution to the problem himself. He got up stretching his arms and flexing his shoulders, not bothering to excuse himself from the presence of his vampire grandsire he moved off to his room. He mumbled something about cat napping as an explanation to Angel's unvoiced question.
Shaking his head at Spike's understanding of so many of his thoughts Angel waited for the rest of his crew to leave before he himself went about some things he'd been meaning to do when he found enough quiet time.
--
Fifteen minutes later found Angel staring out of the side of the heavily curtained window at his friends gadding about on the beach. He had finished what tasks he'd thought he had to do and his mind had immediately returned to his friends, although he had sent them to the beach to get their minds off current problems assuring them that he would be fine, Angel didn't have anything to take his thoughts off the threat that Mara posed.
Instead of relaxing and also taking his mind away from their business here Angel was spending the time he'd set aside for relaxation worrying about his young friends. Thinking this over as he watched them playing in the morning sunshine Angel realised that some of them weren't really all that young.
Bren, Ena and Blaze had been his friends for most of his life, vampiric and human. Even then they had not been particularly young, but it was hard to tell age with Unipegs and their Riders. Of course those three weren't the only Unipegs that Angel knew, there was Clarissa and Lani among the girls of his crew and Nab and Seth made up the male contingent of Unipegs in his crew. He remembered with a sudden pang that there should be another Unipeg in his crew, Saxon, Bren and Ena's oldest brother and only full brother. Saxon had been the closest friend Angel had had over his many long years, through every up and down Saxon had been there beside him when he was needed. Remembering this and how the strong Unipeg had finally failed made Angel's mood worse, it hadn't been natural that his friend die of hypothermia. Although people died every day of the condition a Unipeg especially one of Saxon's age and strength didn't die of hypothermia, it was unnatural.
Since Saxon's death it hadn't only been him noticing the missing presence, Bren had noticed it even more so than her twin because the weight of taking care of her younger sibling had fallen on her small shoulders. He'd done his best to help her and so had Blaze but Bren wasn't one to happily accept help, such was her proud nature when it came to looking after her own kith and kin. Eventually she had allowed them to help her here and there but still making sure that the brunt of anything involving Ena fell on her, keeping in mind that her twin could make her own decisions just as well as Bren could. Naturally Ena had been affected by the death of her brother, he'd been her biggest role-model since her mother and father's deaths.
The hardest part about the loss of their only full brother had been that they'd only just managed to remember the basics of their first four years in their current lives. At that age, no returning Unipeg remembered anything about past lives in case they told someone who believed or knew that particular race was real. The fact that they'd allowed themselves to forget the brother who'd saved them from the fire that had killed their parents, this had stirred an inconsolable heartache.
Returning his mind to his friends on the beach Angel watched carefully, searching the area around them for anyone who might harm them. He had been watching them throwing sand and splashing each other for forty-five minutes when Spike returned from his cat-nap stretching out any muscles that had bunched and cramped during his sleep.
He was flexing his shoulder muscles when he noticed where his grand-sire was sitting, "Hypocrite," he mumbled as he retrieved a beer from the fridge.
Angel looked around at Spike and angrily retorted, "Well at least I care for the people I like to call friends, of course you wouldn't know what friends are, would you?"
"Sounds like somebody else should've taken a nap," Spike said mockingly, "You know how grumpy you get when you miss your midday nap."
"Good one Spike," Angel retorted sarcastically, "Now you must be tired from working your brain so hard, go back to bed until you're needed."
Shaking his head Spike joined Angel at the curtained window, "You worry too much, even for a close friend, you're going to hurt yourself like that someday big fella."
"Someone has to watch them you know, I didn't send them down there to get themselves killed by the bliss of ignorance," Angel said defensively.
"Of course you wouldn't, because you're responsible for them and if anything happens to them that'll be another black mark on your conscience."
"Spike," Angel said in a warning growl.
"Yeah, but seriously mate, in Sunnydale it was Buffy, it still is, you moved to LA for obvious reasons and to protect her," Spike looked at the older vampire, "Now it's that lot. Angel they can't all live forever and neither can we for that matter, someday some stupid bugger's going to stake us and that's it, we're gone in a poof of smelly dust. It was the same with all the other vampires we killed, stake to the heart and they're suddenly stinky ash."
"It doesn't mean that we give up on protecting them now Spike, they're still young, they have their whole lives ahead of them and I don't want some foolish woman to take that away from them."
"They can take care of themselves Angel, why do you think they've lasted this long in your line of work?"
Angel had to admit that Spike had a point but he continued to watch the rest of his crew just to be sure nothing was going to have him lose another crew member as he'd lost Saxon.
"Much as I like being immortal and all, I sometimes would like to spend a little time in the sun," Spike said from behind Angel, "It has an effect on a poet that gives inspiration."
"So that's why your poetry has gotten even worse since Dru turned you," Angel remarked with an evil grin.
"No, my poetry has gotten better since I became a vampire, it just lacks a little something here and there that it wouldn't be if I could walk in the sunshine like I used to," Spike said.
"Well inertia works in so many different circumstances, for every action there is an opposite reaction Spike," Angel said sagely, sounding like a wise grandfather, "You are now immortal but you can never go out in the sun and watch the sunrise as you feel the breeze wash over you. Every vampire has left something behind that in the end they'll miss so very much that they'll wish they could turn back time if only to feel it for a moment."
"So what did you leave behind?" Spike asked Angel.
"My life, my heartbeat and my sister," He said the last with a sort of wistfulness to his voice that stirred curiosity in Spike.
"Your sister?" He questioned the older vampire, "You had a sister?"
"Yes I had a sister, she died as all mortals do sometime," Something about the way Angel said that told Spike that this conversation was over but he was still wondering about this mysterious sister of Angel's. "Spike go and get dressed," Angel commanded.
"Why?"
"Because the youngsters are coming back up," Angel said calmly.
Looking out of the window Spike saw the fourteen other members of the crew slowly making their way back to the hotel and obeyed Angel, only returning when he had dressed himself in his favourite outfit, naturally it was completely black.
By the time he came back out of his room there were fourteen soggy teenagers standing in the kitchen and dining area with towels wrapped around them to keep them from dripping. Angel was standing talking to Blaze, Seth and Della, he looked up and noticed Spike standing and watching him. Della moved a little revealing that Angel's shirt was as damp and sodden as the teenagers around him.
"I thought you couldn't go down to the beach mate," Spike said in a voice of mock bewilderment.
"I can't," Angel replied, "But next time they go swimming you can open the door."
"I'd rather not," Spike said having put together enough that he could guess what had happened to Angel, "They can take a key next time."
Angel smiled a very secretive smile and returned to his conversation with the three teens standing before him, asking them if it was possible to find Mara by tonight or tomorrow night.
--
Despite their doubts, Seth and Della, being the seers of the crew had found where Mara was hiding and had pointed it out on an old map to Angel and their friends. Thankfully Angel told them that he didn't expect them to go and fight Mara that night but to be prepared for a big day tomorrow. They nodded their understanding and left to catch up on any missed sleep that they'd had that past week.
As he walked down the hall to the room that he shared with Taft, Nab, Zev and Seth, Blaze murmured, "So it begins."
"So what begins Blaze?" Taft asked in his strangely childish fashion, Seth looked at Blaze with a gentle look of comforting devotion, already knowing what the older boy meant.
"Una pelea de la familia, Taft, a fight of the family," Blaze said as he herded his friends into their room and shut the door to keep any light from the hall out so they could sleep peacefully, he knew they would need to.
"Blaze," Nab said in the darkness from his bed, "What's Mara like?"
"Go to sleep Nab," Blaze murmured after a brief pause, "You're gonna need it."
-Hope you enjoyed, the next chapter will be up soon.
For those who didn't pick up on what Una pelea de la familia is it's a fight of the family.
Please R&R
