Chapter Eighteen

The Game of Catch Up

No, this couldn't be. Things like this didn't happen. When you go to heaven things are supposed to be simpler. Granted yes that my life here was all but simple but my reasons for that were really only Leon's fault. And now…? This just couldn't be…

"Are you okay?"

I stared at her as her lips formed those three words. If this was Angel's daughter, if this was Mira, then what did that make her to me? She had said that her mother had licked ice cream off of her father's chest. That little once upon a time story had happened. Granted I wasn't supposed to remember a single word of it but it was still there. The memory, the thought and touch, the actions, every little piece of it still lived within my mind and most likely Angels, but how did this girl know this? How was this girl even dead? If she was dead then didn't that technically mean that Leon was dead also? The slayers dying were practically his downfall. His power source was cut off. So was it only a matter of minutes before the thing that I had vowed to kill joined the rest of the sinners in the pits of hell? Or was this once again some sort of shame and I was in another alternate reality where my life still sucked.

"Hey," The girl clapped her hands in front of my face causing me to blink. "Snap out of it. This place is a little too new to me at the moment and I don't really fancy the first normal person I meet to be some sort of nut case that freezes when ever I say som…" That's when it registered. She had let it slip. The whole entire ice-cream licking incident wasn't supposed to come out of her mouth I think. She knew exactly who I was thus thrusting me to believe that this all really wasn't a dream or alternate reality. This was life. Or as lively as life could get once you were dead. She was too young though. I found myself hoping that this was all some sort of huge mistake because this girl was much too young to die. She had been living her years in a tower with Leon where she should have died a long time ago. In real life her youth had probably long faded. Her power had been drained out of her for years now. There was no way a girl with that kind of torture put on her still looked like the heartthrob of a teen world. She shouldn't have died though. I'll never get that. She had sat and suffered for reasons she couldn't control. And what was her reward? Death. Death always seemed to be the gift of choice now a day. In the end though she probably prayed for it. And frankly, I don't know if I could blame her for that.

"Well, that kind of explains the whole freezing up on me thing." She muttered to herself, obviously wanting to give herself mental kicks, or physical, take your pick.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest not quite sure what I was expected to say here. I mean, 'congratulations, you got out of Leon's grasp and are now doomed to watch as the people you love still fight and struggle down on Earth' just really didn't feel like the Hallmark special you were supposed to give on these occasions. "So then my guess that you're Mira wouldn't be wrong then, huh?" It was all I had to fire back at her.

She shrugged. "Cat's out of the bag I guess so yeah. That would be me. It's funny though. You don't really seem to surprised to see me."

"No, I'm completely surprised. On more points then one."

Mira bit her lip. "Well, I guess there's only one thing left to do."

Did she want to talk? Did she want to ask questions on where I had been all her life? Was she even going to explain how a kid who could never be born because the day she was conceived didn't exist or was she going to let that small little fact fade into history? I tried to calm the tremors going through my body. How the hell was I a mom? There had to be some huge mistake. I had to have interpreted all of this wrong. "What would that be?" I finally said.

"Get ice-cream." She started walking off to some direction that neither one of us knew where it would eventually end.

"That's your solution. You're dead and you just see me for the first time and your solution is ice-cream?"

She shrugged. "Supposedly ice-cream is supposed to solve everything."

"No, ice-cream is what you drown your sorrows in."

"So let's drown some sorrows then. It's not like anyone's going to miss them."

"This is Heaven. I don't think sorrows are allowed."

"Oh please," She turned to me and started walking backwards. "That's just an old tale they tell people on their death bed. That when they arrive at the pearly gates everything will be perfect and happy go lucky. Sorry, but that's no ones idea of heaven. That's people's idea of a dull time."

"You really think you should be saying this stuff?" I looked around half expected to see some sort of angel glaring disapprovingly as she played her harp and looked beautiful. It was weird to finally realize how much movies and poems and literature had influenced my vision of heaven. Because when it all came down to it, heaven was a place that you couldn't describe. One thing was for sure though, cherubs weren't flying around playing their sweet melodies. The only creatures here were human. Well, at least they used to be. I don't know what we would be considered now.

"Why, is someone going to smite me or something? Please. You know as well as I do that we're not all immune to emotion here. That emotion and feelings, even the bad, are what makes us who we are. What keeps us human."

"We're not human anymore." I had already gone over this confusing thing in my head a couple times since I had arrived back here.

"Yeah, well no ones perfect."

I ran and caught up to her. "You know, people are going to look at you kind of funny when you're not going around and pretending like this is paradise." I cringed at the slip of the word 'pretending'.

"Isn't it a sin to lie? You telling me that they're going to get mad because I'm telling the truth in the land where that is one of the most important things? Besides, isn't anger, if they get angry that is, isn't that something that should be kicked out of paradise? Face it, heaven is a place of no weapons or mass destruction, not a place where we're all on some sort of acid high and can only feel the good. My father once told me that you have to take the bad, with the good."

I stopped and looked at her strangely. "Angel didn't say that."

"No, but Heath Ledger did."

"Knights Tale?"

"For a corpse you're pretty up on pop culture."

"Technically it's ancient history now and of course I'm going to know where that comes from. That was my era. Plus do you really think we can't watch movies up here?"

"You can watch movies up here?" Her face lit up as her blonde hair bounced around her bright face.

"First you want ice-cream and now you want movies. Boy, I guess this is a teenage paradise."

She smirked; the same smirk that I now realized was genetic in this family. "Ice-cream first, then Hollywood heartthrobs." She stopped and looked around. "So, how do I do this? How do I get the ice-cream I mean?"

I realized that she really didn't know the ropes here. "Think it and it'll happen."

"Kind of like that whole 'build it and he will come' thing?"

"Just hurry up and get us some ice-cream."

Closing her eyes in mass concentration Mira furrowed her brow. All the while she stood chewing on her bottom lip like this was one of the most important things in the world to her. And then as if out of nowhere it appeared. An old fashioned ice-cream shop straight out of the fifties where kids would go before a sock hop had appeared in front of our eyes.

"What's with the retro?"

"That's the only pictures of ice-cream shops I've ever seen." She shrugged and walked in, and to both of our surprise a man stood there behind the counter, his red and white pinstripe outfit neatly in place, greeting us with a smile.

"What can I get you young ladies today?"

Mira looked at him at a loss. "Anything?"

"First time?" He smiled. She just nodded briefly allowing him to turn to me instead and ask the same thing.

"Um… I'll just have a chocolate milkshake please."

"One chocolate milkshake and a little bit of everything else coming right up." Snapping his fingers my shake appeared right along with dozens of other dishes of cream overflowing with chocolate and raspberry syrups with nuts swimming inside their frothy substance. Mira just looked at them all with wide eyes as the dishes extended down to the bar. "Enjoy." The man smiled before disappearing into what we could only assume was the back room.

"Wow. I don't think I've ever seen this much food at once."

"Honestly? I haven't either." In all my years of Willow, Xander and my movie nights, our nights of endless partying because we had just defeated some sort of big or bad or ugly, sometimes all three, I had never seen this much food. Granted, if we did have this in front of our faces, it would have all been gone by the end of the night. Seeing how at that point in time we still had to deal with the trivial things such as weight and health, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that I hadn't' seen this amount of food before. I would have weighed seven hundred pounds if I had.

Like a child in a candy shop, which in all actuality she really was, Mira dug in with the utmost excitement. It wasn't until about an hour and a half later, when the two of us had stuffed our faces with so many things, ordering more and more of what we liked the best, did we go sit down in one of the booths by the windows and watched as people started gathering around and discovering Mira's little piece of heaven. A park lay outside the window right next to us where kids were longingly looking in on the ice-cream shop. Not quite certain if they should stop in and grab a cone or continue playing in the endless sun. Each and every one of them acted as if tomorrow they would be pulled out of this fantasy land and back into the harshness of reality. It was a fear that was widely felt but rarely admitted here, and no matter how hard we tried, it seemed to be the only one we couldn't escape.

"So…" she started.

I looked at her. She was chewing a straw and fiddling with her drink a little. "So…?"

"You know you weren't supposed to know who you are right?"

"Not quite following you." I lied. I knew she was getting at the whole entire mother thing but I wasn't so sure if that was exactly something I wanted to say out loud. I wasn't sure if I wanted to admit that technically I had a kid that I had never seen except for in a freaky walk down Angel's memory lane before today.

"I slipped. I wasn't supposed to let you know that you're my…. Well that you're my mom."

"Why wasn't I supposed to know?"

"The Powers thought it would only complicate things."

"Oh yes, because they just strive to make my life so easy."

Mira smiled. "You hate them too huh?" She sighed. "Point is, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. It should have been something that I sat down and told you when the time was right, when this war was over… that's not going to happen any time soon though."

"You sound as if you already know the outcome of all this."

She looked down at her drink almost in disgust, keying me off right there that that was exactly what she had meant to sound like. My heart dropped. She knew the outcome of all this and it wasn't in our favor. "Dad should have been the one to tell you." She said quietly, changing the subject just as effectively though. "He would have wanted it that way."

"Yeah, well if you haven't noticed, he tries to avoid uncomfortable conversations. This wasn't going to be one that was about to come up any time soon if ever."

"He would have told you in the end. When he has… had," I cocked my head at her changing of tense in her words there. "When he had to kill me he would have told you in the end. I don't know how he would have told you seeing how you're never a grantee to listen while your up here, but he would have found a way. He would have wanted you to see me."

I just looked at her. She sounded remorse and sad about this whole subject. Which in some ways surprised me. This was the girl that was related to Connor was it not? Connor rarely spoke of his father with concern in his voice. His words tended to be laced with bitter anger instead of this sadness that was on Mira's at the moment.

"Is he…. Is he better?" I had completely forgotten. She had been locked away in a tower now for a couple years. She had no idea who her father was anymore. Before she had gone yes he had been pretty insane, depressed and so many other words that had fit his state of being at the time. Still, it had only gotten worse, much worse, since her kidnapping. He had broken after that. And now? Now he was back to some semblance of the man that I knew, the man that she had never got to meet.

"He's better. I was… I was actually down there for a while."

Her head went up and met my eyes. "You were on Earth? With Dad?" I just nodded my head as she laughed shortly. "It's really gone to hell since you've been gone."

"You have no idea."

"How'd you even get back down there?"

I smiled faintly and motioned to our surrounding. "The Powers. Your dad was in a bad place so they sent me down there to straighten him out, keep him from doing something stupid."

"And you did?" She smiled brightly. "You know, people always told me that you seemed to be the only one that he would truly listen too but I just didn't…." Her words trailed off and she leaned back a little bit as she stared into my eyes, comprehension dawning on her. "They took you away from him again." I was going to nod my head for an answer when I realized that she didn't need one. It had been rhetorical. "How the hell could they do that to him?" She just looked shocked. Obviously she didn't know the history between the PTB and him. "They thought that that was going to make everything okay? They send you down there to snap him out of it and then as he starts to get better they take you back up here? What the hell were they thinking? Are they insane?" She got up from her seat and started walking around. "What the hell kind of people would do that to him? I mean, my dad is screwed up, yeah I know. And for the little time that I knew him, I knew that it was pretty bad, but it's had to have only gotten worse since I've been gone and so…." She threw her glass up against one of the walls, the few people that had wondered in here during these past couple hours gave her strange looks, not quite sure what could possibly cause an upset in a place like this. "They must just love fucking with our god damned lives." She shook her head, resting the back of it up against one of the glass windows, her voice deadly, and from experience, that was never good.

"He's okay Mira. Granted he's not great. But he's a lot better then he was. He's back on his feet."

"Yeah, and the only person that was there supporting him is now up here once again sipping on milkshakes. Guess Earths not the only screwed up place."

I bowed my head slightly. I couldn't really yell at her or tell her that she was wrong in her thinking because I had thought it myself not to long ago. I had thought it when I arrived here the first time around all those hundreds of years ago, and I had thought it just recently. It was something that you kind of had to get used to. The answers came with time; the reasons why certain things happened the way they did. I was never going to get them. And I absolutely hated the Powers for that. But I had… no, I needed to believe that this was all going to work out in the end and that the Powers were doing what's right for everyone all together instead of just the few people like me and Angel. Like I had said earlier, we were no more then pawns in this cosmic game of chess. We were here to pave the way for others so in the future they wouldn't have to deal with shit like this. And unfortunately, I couldn't tell Mira this. She had to come to this on her own. I needed to fully accept this too before I even began to speak of it with her.

"He's better then you think Mira. He has…" I trailed off. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. Who did he have? The hooker? His son that hated him? Or how about the vampire that ran and pillaged with him for years and then proceeded to torture and try to kill him for years after that while all the while killing innocents, the very thing he thought he had to save in order to serve his repentance?

"Is… Is Connor still there?" She looked at me through the corner of her eye.

"Yeah."

She took a deep breath. "Alright, that could be good or it cold be bad. What about Spike?"

"Again, yeah."

She seemed to almost breathe a huge sigh of relief. "Good. I guess things aren't so bad as long as Spikes there."

I couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up through my throat. "You're kidding right? Spike being there is a good thing?"

She looked t me confused. "Well, yeah. You don't' think so?" At first I thought she was joking. She seemed to have enough of my personality to pull something like this but the look on her face was slowly telling me that this was anything but a joke.

"I think the question is is that you don't' think so? Spikes tried to kill Angel and the rest of the human populace more times then I can't count. Not to mention he's taken out two slayers that I know of. Who knows how many more since I've been dead."

"Spike couldn't hurt a fly."

"We are talking about the same Spike here right?"

She smiled slightly. "So he can be a little rough around the edges when it comes to the subject of my dad… or really anything seeing how he hates most things in this world." She looked off fondly seeming to remember something, but then shook herself out of it. "Anyways, he's good back up. He's always got Angel's back and is helping him out with spy work and stuff. He won't let anything happen to dad."

"And you think this because?" I still looked at her like she was insane.

"He made a promise to a girl once."

"Spike makes a lot of promises…"

"He promised me. Not long before I got kidnapped he promised that if anything had ever happened to me or Connor that he would look out for dad because he knew he would just go off the deep end. I trust Spike. You may not but I do. This guy used to spend hours telling me stories about all sorts of things. That's how I got to know Angel, was through Spike. Hell, that's how I got to know you."

"And color me surprised when you aren't trying to kill me after the stories that Spike's told you about me."

She rolled her eyes. "He was in love with you. He thought you were practically an angel yourself."

"He what?" Spike said this? She had to be suffering from some sort of mental weirdness from post death trauma or something.

"Yeah, He did. He used to tell me how I took after you more then anybody. How I had the same personality, the same courage, how I looked after dad just like you did. He told me about how you died saving the world and your little sister because family was everything to you. He told me how you had to sacrifice everything and send Angel to hell to save the world. You were a god in his book Buffy." She paused to let that sink in. "And dad? Yeah, his stories were a little interesting and far fetched. Poof and wanker played big parts in these stories, but underlying all the cracks about the nancy boy hair gel and his gay taste in clothes, my dad was there. His old personality was there. And I got to know my parents. Spike treated me like I was his own kid. He might not have shown it but he was probably just as upset when I got kidnapped. He just had to be strong because for reasons unknown he hates to show emotions like that. Now you may not think he's good with teenagers but…"

"No," I interrupted her. "No, I know he's good with teenagers." I couldn't believe I hadn't stopped and thought about this before. Of course Spike was going to be the one who had taken care of her. After all, Dawn had adored him. When I died she had spent hours in his crypt watching old movies as he let her forget that there was such a thing as death as he himself mourned over her dead sister. I knew exactly what Mira was talking about, I just never thought that his care and compassion for people around him that knew Angel, could extend as far as promising to look after the man that he hated. "I believe you on that one. No more arguments."

She raised her eyebrow. "That was too easy."

"Yeah well I'm tired so don't get used to it. On a regular day I could still kick your ass."

"You wish."

I smiled. Maybe this whole thing wasn't going to be as awkward as I thought it would be.

"Come on, we need to go figure some things out. Away from people." And without words spoken again, we headed towards the graveyard.