Angel unlocked the back door to the Hyperion Hotel, and the Slayers and the two Watchers followed him in from the alley.
"Angel Investigations still owns the building," he explained as he led them down the hallway. "Utilities are still hooked up, but we haven't been in here much since we moved to Wolfram and Hart. If you're all just hanging around waiting for a possible Round Two and for Dawn and her cousin and Fred-- and, God willing, Wesley-- to get back, I suggest you all just hang out in the lobby."
He led them into the lobby, then worked his way around the counter toward his old office. The others followed him. He looked back at them and sighed.
"Mr. Angel," Amanda said, "you know we're not gonna let you out of our sight."
"Yeah, I heard what Dawn said about keeping an eye on me. And I know the whole lot of you working together could dust me in a New York minute. Jeez! Can't a guy make a private phone call in his own building?"
Andrew held Amanda's hand and smiled. "Let me take care of this. Keep both teams in the lobby. You can see us through the glass."
He followed Angel into his office while the Slayers and Amanda waited outside the door. As he closed it behind him, he said anxiously but at a whisper: "Angel, what happened to Spike?"
"Relax, Andrew. He's all right. He survived the fight. Gunn got hurt and he took him to the hospital about ten or fifteen minutes before you got here."
"So he'll be back?" Andrew asked. He was more worried than hopeful, and Angel understood perfectly why.
"Not if I'm lucky! And you can relax. If he doesn't come back, I'm not saying a word to Dawn. And if I know him as well as I think I do, he's gonna take this opportunity to bug out and try to find..." He stopped, and a smile crept to his face. "Buffy's not really in Rome, is she?"
Andrew pursed his lips. "No comment."
"She can't be! No way she'd send Dawn on a mission this potentially apocalyptic unless she was somewhere nearby. And there's no way the two of them could have made it here from Rome in the few hours since the Senior Partners started their rumblings tonight."
"No comment!"
"Not a problem, my friend!" Angel laughed as he slapped Andrew's shoulder. "Unless Spike has a total change of character within the next couple of hours, none of us are going to be hearing from him any time in the foreseeable future. Including Buffy! So you're probably off the hook!"
"Oh. Good." Andrew nodded. "Oh, you were about to make a phone call?"
"Oh, yeah. Thanks. Almost forgot."
"Whoa!" Dawn yelled as she stomped on the brakes, even though the street in Holmby Hills was empty of traffic and there were no stop signs or traffic lights anywhere in sight ahead of them. The tires of the Hummer screeched as she and her two passengers were thrown into their shoulder belts.
"Dawn, what's wrong?" Fred asked, gasping nervously. "Was it something I said?"
"Big Whoa here!" Dawn looked at her, also breathing heavily. "Fred, I understand that you're grieving for Wesley and you're anxious to get him back. He was my friend too. I know we have a lot of friends in common. Willow thinks the world of you..."
"But?"
"But the last time an exiled demon-goddess sharing a body with a human being tried to use my energy for something, the entire universe almost disintegrated! And my sister had to die to stop it!"
Fred's heart sank. "Dawn, it won't be anything like that. I promise!"
"Who's promising? Fred or Illyria?"
"Both of us." Fred bit her lip. "Can we at least keep driving while we discuss this? We're running out of time."
Dawn continued driving down the street. "All right. But you just told me Illyria didn't even realize your soul was still in your body. So how can she be sure this won't cause the end of the universe?"
"Because Illyria was a haughty, arrogant goddess who didn't really understand or care about the human soul... and is now so sorry for it that she's sublimated herself to me and wants to undo her damage. But she does understand mystic energy. And I'm a physicist. Between us, we know how to tap and channel them."
"Does it involve my bleeding in any way?"
"No. I just draw a little of your energy by holding your hand."
"You're sure?"
"No blood. I promise." Fred paused thoughtfully. "Dawn, your sister died, but Willow brought her back. She told me the story. That's what we'll be doing."
"That's not the point. But as long as you brought it up, did Willow also tell you that Buffy was in a heavenly dimension, and that being brought back made this life feel like hell for her? That Buffy was depressed and suicidal for six months afterward?"
"But she's fine now, right? You don't mean to tell me you're sorry that Willow brought her back!"
Dawn's eyes watered as she relived the entire experience in seconds, from the time Buffy jumped off Glory's tower into the interdimensional portal, to the time a year later when she finally snapped out of her depression after the two sisters together had to fight off a horde of Earth Demons that a grieving and berserk Willow had summoned. "No," she admitted.
"Dawn," Fred cried, "Buffy's your sister. Wesley's the love of my life. You must know how how I feel."
"I do," Dawn sniffled, then, while continuing to steer with her left hand, placed her right over Fred's left. "You absolutely promise no blood?"
She suddenly felt a mild current where their hands touched, and out of the corner of her eye saw a ball of green sparks glow momentarily around the two hands. It lasted a second or so.
"It'll be just like that," Fred smiled. "Nothing more. I promise."
"All right," Dawn nodded.
Fred guided Dawn through a couple of turns through the neighborhood, onto the circular driveway of a large Tudor mansion. They stopped under the awning at the front doorway and opened the doors to the Hummer.
"Cyndi," Dawn said as she reached for her sword, "bring the scythe."
"We won't need it," Fred told them. "Like I said, it's a different kind of energy."
Dawn looked into her cousin's eyes. "Bring the scythe. Stand back and use your instincts. Anything happens that makes me bleed, or if it looks like some unworldly glowing portal starts to open, or anything else doesn't feel right, take her head off!"
Fred went pale but said nothing as she opened the mansion door.
"Dawn," Cyndi said, "Buffy told me and Colette about her dying and coming back. But neither of you ever said anything about your blood being able to end the universe."
"Like I said, I don't like to advertise this. And it's only when I bleed under extremely special conditions-- Heck, if it was every time I bled, the universe would have ended a dozen times over." Dawn smiled as she gave Cyndi a gentle push toward the door. "Welcome to the Kolchak clan, Cuz!"
They followed Fred through the doorway. She led them through a maze of chandeliered wood-paneled corridors with marble flooring, and into a large ballroom.
The body of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce lay on the marble floor in the center of the ballroom as Illyria had left it: laid out with his hands resting on his abdomen, a huge and now darkened bloodstain on his gray sweater underneath. Dressed in the gray turtleneck, a brown leather jacket and jeans rather than the traditional tweed of the old Watchers, Dawn barely recognized him. A few bloodstains on his face didn't help either. She and Cyndi noticed in the doorway to a dining room off to one side, sprawled as if casually tossed there, the headless corpse of some red-skinned demon in a red silk robe. Remnants of a skull with long white hair were still attached to its neck.
Fred knelt at the side of Wesley's body, weeping, and then she looked up at Dawn and Cyndi as she touched it. "We're not too late!" she smiled.
"Okay," Dawn nodded with relief. "What do you want me to do?"
"Just sit on his other side."
Dawn did so, tucking up her legs into the lotus position and laying her sword within easy reach, then gave a brief moment of eye contact to Cyndi, who moved to about two steps behind Fred with the scythe in the ready position. Fred glanced nervously over her shoulder.
"You keep your promise and it won't matter that she's there," Dawn told Fred.
"I understand. I will," Fred said. She gently moved Wesley's hands aside, exposing a large, gaping and gory knife wound. She then held Dawn's right hand with her own left. There were no sparks or current. "Place your other hand on his heart."
Dawn did so, and then Fred placed her right hand on the knife wound. Dawn felt the mild current running through both of her hands. The green sparks appeared, running from her left hand and disappearing into Wesley's chest, and from her right hand they flowed up Fred's arm and began to envelop her entire body. When the envelopment was complete, the sparks built up in intensity around her so that she was by far the brightest object in the room, and then Dawn saw that Fred was no longer wearing a scavenged demon cloak over a wet top and skirt, but was clad in some kind of leathery armor, her hair and eyes no longer chestnut-brown but a glowing light blue.
Illyria, I presume? Dawn thought. She forced herself not to laugh or smile, and made appreciative note of the fact that she had full control over all her faculties and, as promised, was feeling nothing more than the rush of mild current through her hands.
The green sparks then ran from Illyria's/Fred's right hand onto the open wound on Wesley's abdomen, building up there before spreading up and connecting with the sparks flowing from Dawn's left hand into his chest. Soon both Wesley's body and Fred were glowing brightly with the green electricity, and then the body began to twitch and then to convulse with increasing intensity. Suddenly, with one final convulsion, Wesley let out an ungodly scream as the green sparks burst outward from him, knocking both Dawn and Fred on their backs. Dawn immediately propped herself back up on her elbows, but Fred stayed down and passed out with an exhausted moan, a dark-haired waif once again.
"Whoa!" Cyndi said as she knelt next to Fred. "That's some combined punch the two of you have!"
"Yeah," Dawn nodded, catching her breath. "She all right?"
"I think she just fainted," Cyndi said after feeling Fred's pulse at her throat. Dawn returned her attention to Wesley. There were still some green sparks over his knife wound, and then they dissipated and she saw through the hole in his sweater that the wound had closed with a red scar. His chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths.
"Bloody hell!" Wesley groaned. He opened his eyes and looked around slowly: he was back on the floor in Vail's ballroom; somehow Vail had been decapitated and his body had been moved from where Illyria had knocked him earlier, and Illyria was lying unconscious beside him, still looking like Fred, only now barefoot and wearing some strange cloak or cape. And there were two teenage girls kneeling over the two of them; one was a blonde whom he had never seen before and who was staring at him in open-mouthed awe as if she were seeing the dead rise up. The other, darker-haired girl closer to him was less awestruck, and seemed vaguely familiar.
"Hi, Wes!" she smiled as she touched his shoulder. She was no longer the pigtailed, freckle-faced preadolescent he remembered, but there was no mistaking that room-brightening smile.
"Dawn?" he squinted at her.
"Yeah, it's me," she nodded. "How you feeling?"
"I... I'm not sure." He tried to sit up but fell backward. "What the devil are you doing here, Dawn? You're just about the last person in the world I'd ever expect to see in a place like this."
"A lot can change in five years," Dawn replied as she helped him sit up. "You might say Buffy let me in on the family business. The seers in the coven that Giles works with sensed a big time rise of evil here in LA. They sent me to lead a team of Slayers to ward off an apocalypse. Oh, and speaking of the family business, this is my cousin Cyndi. She's a Slayer too.""
"Pleased to meet you," Wesley nodded. "Yes, a lot has changed!"
"The seers guided us to the alleyway behind the Hyperion," Dawn continued. "When we got there, we found this whole horde of assorted dead demons around Angel and Fred."
"Just Angel and..." he nodded toward Fred's still unconscious form, "... her?"
"Yeah," Dawn nodded.
"I imagine they're all that's left, then," he said mournfully. Before he said anything else, he remembered that Buffy and her crew didn't know that Spike had returned. With him presumably now dust, better off that they not know at all.
"They were, but now we got you back!"
His eyes opened wide with the realization and recollection. "Oh, my God! Yes, I was dead, wasn't I?"
"Doornail," Cyndi nodded.
"How... how was I... brought back?"
"This is something I don't want too many people to know about," Dawn replied. "None of us knew about it back when you were Buffy's Watcher. But I have some kind of supernatural energy inside me. The less people know about it, the better, but Fred said that Illyria could sense my energy and could use it to bring you back, so..."
Fred moaned and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times, and then turned her head toward Wesley. In an instant, she snapped to sitting upright and had her arms tightly around him. "Wesley!" she cried out. He stiffened in her arms as she kissed him. "Oh, Wesley! My love! You're alive!" She reached out to momentarily squeeze Dawn's hand. "We did it, Dawn! Oh, thank you! Thank you!" She continued to sob as she kissed him repeatedly on the lips and both cheeks. Dawn watched with watering eyes, remembering her own feelings upon seeing Buffy alive for the first time after Willow's resurrection spell, but then she became more aware of Wesley's stiff posture and cold facial expression, and of Fred's obliviousness to it.
Wesley could no longer stand it. He pulled away and grabbed Fred's wrists, holding her off at a distance.
"Thank you, but you should have let me stay dead!" he said. "Send me back!"
"Hey, Romeo!" Dawn said. "Before you take the poison, make sure Juliet's really dead first!"
"This isn't Fred!" he snapped at Dawn, then turned to Fred. "I let you lie to me because I was dying. Why you brought me back, I don't know, but now that I'm back, don't look like her again!"
"Wesley, it's me!" Fred sobbed. "I'm Fred! Illyria was wrong about my soul being destroyed. She didn't understand about human souls or emotions. I was trapped in my own body without any control over it the whole time. When she turned into me while you were dying, she felt my pain and my grief. She never felt it before and she's sorry. She's still inside me but she gave me my body back. She thought I was going to die, and she was willing to die with me because she's so sorry for the pain she caused all of us."
"You've always been a very convincing liar, Illyria." Wesley said bitterly. As she dropped back to the floor and buried her face in her forearms, he turned to Dawn. "You should never have brought me back."
"You may feel that way now, Wes," Dawn said, recalling Buffy's own traumatic experiences, "but it'll get better. What do you remember?"
"I remember going toward a bright light," Wesley said wistfully. "Then it was warm and the light was gentle, and there was soft music, and I was formless, and I was cared for..."
Dawn nodded. It was very similar to what Buffy had described.
"... but it wasn't really Heaven because Fred wasn't there!" he finished, tears forming in his eyes.
"Well, DUH!" Dawn threw her hands up. "You think maybe that's because she's lying right next to you?"
Fred took her face out of her forearms and looked up tearfully at him, but said nothing more.
"Uh, Dawn," Cyndi spoke up. "Do you think we can continue this back in the Hummer? My spider sense is tingling."
"Yeah," Dawn nodded. "Let's go."
She and Cyndi had just helped Wesley and Fred to stand up when they were suddenly bowled over by a bolt of demonic energy from behind.
FEEDBACK/REVIEWS ARE INVITED!
Thanks to Nala147 for your comment. Hope this chapter lives up to your expectations. ;-)