Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for the ones that I created like Hope, Dominic, and Joyce.
CHAPTER 5-NEW WORRIES
"Sorry to bother you so late…but I just thought of something and it couldn't wait," Willow said with an uncomfortable look on her face as she slowly walked into Wesley and Faith's house.
"Forget about it, we were still up anyway…so what's the problem," Faith said with a slight wave of her hand and gentle smile on her face as she shut the door behind Willow.
"Oz and I were talking in bed and I was just about to go to sleep when it came to me…we performed autopsies on most of the bodies…Wesley, if what you're saying about those soul sucking demons is true then…we killed those people, not the demon," Willow replied with a very scared and self loathing look on her face as she seemed to not be able to stop shaking.
"You didn't kill them Willow, if what I said is true then most of the demons victims truly are dead, even if we were to find and kill the demon, retrieving the soul is only possible if its within twenty four hours of it being taken, after that it's to late…it's not your fault," Wesley said with a very comforting and reassuring tone to his voice as he stepped forward and pulled Willow into a tight hug before she buried her face into his shoulder and let the tears, that had been threatening to fall ever since she had sat up in bed, fall.
"Yeah Will, you're not a…you didn't kill those people, you did the right thing," Faith started to try to help but stopped suddenly when she realized what she was about to say and she managed to change her response to add weight to Wesley's words.
"Faith's right, you did the only thing that you knew to do, in fact you probably saved some of them from becoming something abhorrent like zombies or golems," Wesley said with a supportive edge to his voice as he guided Willow over to the couch and set her down while Faith hurried into the kitchen to brew up a cup of the tea that Willow and Oz had given them as a housewarming present. Neither Wesley nor Faith liked the tea too much, though they knew that it was Willow's favorite, but they had never let Willow know that.
"You're probably right…but that doesn't really make me feel any better about all of this," Willow said with a tired and scared look on her face as she fiddled a bit with the tips of a few strands of her hair.
"I'm sorry Willow but I'm not sure if anything can make you feel better about this, in this line of work things happen that are terrible, things that we have no control over and wonder why they happen, you do the best that you can at the time, you make decisions given the information that you have and hope that you can live with the outcome, you didn't have any idea that those people could possibly be saved, besides didn't the department only give you the file after about half a dozen people had died, by that time it was already to late to save most of them, even if you had known about the demon there wasn't much that you could have done for them," Wesley said softly as he did his best to bolster Willow's spirits and give Faith time to complete the tea.
"Yeah Will, the only thing that we can do now is try to find that Tavivosh demon and kill it before the twenty four hour window is up for Mr. Espinosa, how much time do we got," Faith interjected with a helpful look on her face as she half stepped back into the living room and leaned her shoulder up against the doorframe with the free swinging door push halfway open.
"Not long, and I'm not even sure that we can truly track this thing, since they were thought to have gone extinct ages ago I'll have to do some research to even begin to get a bead on the demon, it could take awhile, I don't want to say this but I'm afraid it looks like Mr. Espinosa will not make it, and there's nothing that we can do to save him, unless our luck suddenly shot up," Wesley said with a grimly sarcastic smirk on his face as he sat back and turned on a small lap on the coffee table.
"Do these demons give off any sort of aura, maybe I could cast some sort of locator spell to find just the right type of aura, we do have informants that can sense negative energy, maybe they could help," Willow continued with a thoughtful pout on her face as she was desperately searching for something to help and stop the rash of deaths.
"Not from what I've read so far, sorry Willow, however they do tend to congregate around the water, though I'm not quite sure exactly why," Wesley replied with a tired yawn and nervous look on his face before Faith reentered the room with three cups of tea and handed two of them to Wesley and Willow.
"Thank you," Willow said softly to Faith with an appreciative smile on her face as Faith took her seat next to Wesley and casually overlapped her left leg over his right and began to softly bump her heel into the side of his ankle. Faith replied with a small shrug of her shoulders before she forced herself to swallow some of the tea, and did her best not to snicker when she glanced over and saw the look on Wesley's face as he downed some as well.
"Perhaps you could bring some of your materials to the station and let the tech guys give it a once over, we can scan the books into the database and maybe speed up the search, or at the very least point them in the right direction for their online searches," Willow offered with a calmer look on her face before she took a large sip of her cup of tea.
"That could work, might give Wes and I a little free time, what with more than one person looking through all of those old books," Faith said with an optimistic expression on her face as she leaned back into Wesley and took a small sip of her tea.
"If the two of you wanted some free time why did you rush into joining the department as freelance detectives, I would have understood if," Willow started to say with a nervous and upset look on her face before Faith broke in.
"Easy there Will, it was just that Wes and I haven't had a vacation in a year or so but this is more important," Faith said with an apologetic look on her face and tone to her voice as she looked straight at Willow, hoping that she would understand her point.
"Sorry, it's just that this case has me on edge, this case and Tara starting a new daycare…I've just been a mess recently," Willow said with an overstressed expression on her face before she set her cup of tea down onto the coffee table and ran her hands through her hair while sighing deeply.
"You're a single…okay partially single mother trying to raise a daughter in a shit crazy city while trying to figure out what you and Oz are to each other, and on top of that you have to run an entire section of the city's police department, you're just pushing yourself to hard, you should give yourself some credit, a lesser woman would have cracked under the pressure a long time ago," Faith replied with a supportive tone to her voice as she reached out and gave Willow's shoulder a comforting squeeze.
"Faith's right Willow, you're doing the best that you can and that's all that anyone could rightly ask of you," Wesley said softly in support of Faith's words as he nodded his head while Faith leaned back and laid the back of her head on his shoulder.
"I wish that I could believe you, but City Hall isn't happy with a lot of our work, they just don't seem to understand that the same rules that apply to humanity don't work for the supernatural world, I can't treat a demon the same way that I can a human," Willow said with a worried look on her face as she stood up and then began to nervously pace around the living room.
"Would it help if I talked to them, I could probably answer a lot of their questions about demons and the like," Wesley asked with a concerned look on his face as he set his cup of tea down on the coffee table and turned to Willow.
"I don't know if it'd do any good, all that they want is results, they could care less how we get them," Willow replied with a sad look on her face as she glanced over the headlines on the newspaper that Wesley had left on one of the other chairs.
"People with that much power are all the same, they want everything done on their timetable and done just the way they like it, even if in the end it just fucks everything up more than it already was," Faith groaned with an annoyed scowl on her face as she balled up her fist and then pounded it down hard onto the top of her thigh.
"Preaching to the choir here," Willow joked with a humorous smile on her face before she stood up and reached for her coat.
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"So who do you think she looks more like, Wesley…or Faith," Fred asked with a bored look on her face as she stared straight at Hope, who was sitting on the counter in the lobby of the Hyperion with a stuffed bear in her hands.
"Definitely Faith, though she does have that odd stare of his, the one it looks like he's looking straight through you," Gunn answered with a bored stiff sigh as he reclined back on the couch and began to calmly toss a Nerf football up into the air and then catch it.
"Lucky for her then," Lindsey interjected with an amused smirk on his face as he and Elaine walked into the lobby of the Hyperion, with Elaine pushing a stroller in front of her.
"Lindsey…Elaine hey, and little Isaac," Fred said with an excited and welcoming smile on her face as she slid around the end of the counter and scooped Hope up into her arms as she made her way towards the newcomers.
"Hi Fred, Angel around," Lindsey said with a half hearted smile on his face as it was easy to tell that he was preoccupied with something and wouldn't let it go until he talked it over with Angel.
"Yeah he's in his office talking with Cordelia, she's become obsessed with remodeling the nursery," Gunn replied with a short chuckle as the images of Cordelia taking Angel's entire day up to that point up with talk of the nursery.
"I can't say that I'm surprised, seeing as how pretty much you two are the only ones without children," Elaine said with a tired sigh as she stopped pushing the stroller when she got to the circular sofa and plopped down onto it. Her newly chocolate locks held up in a hastily pulled back ponytail.
"Not for much longer," Fred said with a very smug smirk on her face as sat down on the couch beside Elaine. Across the room Gunn had tossed the football up into the air just as Fred had begun to answer and when she finished and what she had said registered in his brain the football dropped to the floor, with him frozen in place. Lindsey couldn't help but grin and then laugh at the immediate expression on Gunn's face.
"Congrats Charles," Lindsey said with a wide grin on his face as he clapped Gunn on the shoulder on his way to Angel's office while Elaine and Fred launched into a furious discussion about all things baby.
"I'm telling you Angel, we should just knock out the west wall and open up into that old ballroom…you know the one, that big one that you use for storage space now," Cordelia said with a very determined look on her face as she stood beside Angel and pointed out the position of the two rooms on the building plans that she had spread out across Angel's desk.
"But then where do I put all of my stuff, when you've been around as long as I have you tend to accumulate an awful lot," Angel said with a proud and celebratory expression on his face as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
"Two hundred and fifty years of knickknacks aren't as important as the future of our godchildren and your grandson," Cordelia shot back with an unimpressed pout on her face, as she seemed to mostly ignore the hurt look on Angel's face as Lindsey walked into the office.
"And hopefully someday your own as well," Lindsey added with a calm smile on his face as he stopped just behind the chairs in front of Angel's desk and slipped his hands into his pockets, casually awaiting Angel and Cordelia's reply.
"That's the dream," Angel mumbled softly under his breath in reply as though he wasn't entirely thrilled to see Lindsey he was glad for the interruption from the two hours of arguing over the nursery with Cordelia.
"So Lindsey…what brings you here today, Elaine finally wise up and kick you out of the house," Cordelia stated with a warm but sarcastic smile on her face as Lindsey returned the smile and laughed before answering.
"You wish Cordy, no…I need to talk to Angel about something important…so if you wouldn't mind," Lindsey replied with an amused smirk on his face before he nodded his head towards the doorway. Cordelia looked about ready to argue fiercely for a moment but then shrugged her shoulders and began to roll up the maps on Angel's desk.
"Fine, if you boys want to talk then I'll just get out of your way, though Angel don't think that this means that we're even close to done talking about the nursery, you can't put it off forever," Cordelia said with a very serious and impatient look on her face as she picked the maps and other materials up and then headed out of the office as Lindsey held the door open for her.
"That woman is something else," Angel said with an amused look on his face as he watched Cordelia go before he turned back to Lindsey just as the latter let the door shut.
"Tell me about it, but unfortunately I'm not here to talk about her, Kate called me yesterday afternoon and told me about what was happening with the rash of recent deaths, she's still stuck in Washington trying to calm some lawmakers nerves about what she and her team does so she asked me…and thereby you, to look into the matter for her," Lindsey said with a serious look on his face as he walked further into the office and then casually sat down in one of the chairs.
"Willow showed me the file at the policeman's ball, I've never seen anything like it before, what am I supposed to do about the deaths," Angel asked with a nervous and concerned look on his face as he rearranged the papers on the top of his desk and waited for Lindsey to enlighten him.
"Well the obvious answer would be to stop them wouldn't it, or have you given up being the hero for hire and gone into the daycare business," Lindsey replied with his usual cocky smirk before he leaned forward in his chair just long enough to grab one of the knickknacks off of Angel's desk and then sit back.
"Sometimes I'm glad that I can't have any kids, if Wesley and Faith have any more then I'll have to seriously think about hiring someone full time just to watch them, with our new status with the LA police department I just don't feel safe letting Hope and Dominic go to a regular daycare, Willow and Oz are trying a normal one with Tara but I don't know how long that'll last," Angel replied with a very serious and nervous look on his face as he sat back in his chair and stared briefly up at the ceiling.
"Well if you do decide to start some kind of daycare maybe you should let Elaine run it, after leaving Wolfram and Hart it's been hard for her to find work, I have the advantage of still being able to practice law," Lindsey said with a slightly nervous look on his face as he shifted in his seat before briefly glancing back over his shoulder
"You'll have to bring that up with Cordelia, she seems to have become obsessed with the idea, but I'm afraid that it's all a front for her insecurities about not having a child of her own," Angel replied with a concerned frown on his face as he looked over Lindsey's shoulder and out into the lobby where he could see Fred and Cordelia hugging.
"I hope that you're wrong, because after that little bombshell that Winifred dropped on Chuck out there you'd better be making room for one more," Lindsey said with a slightly smug smirk on his face as he glanced back at the door before returning his gaze to Angel.
"You mean Fred's…pregnant," Angel asked with a surprised look on his face as he sat up in his chair and looked intently out into the lobby.
"Couldn't you sense it, vampire hearing and all, surely you should have heard the heartbeat by now," Lindsey answered with a shocked smile on his face as he sat up in his chair and grinned at Angel.
"Guess I've been slipping a bit lately, I'm not as young as I used to be," Angel said with a tired and overworked expression on his face as he shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his eyes.
"Maybe you're getting vampire Alzheimer's," Lindsey quipped with a sly grin on his face as he expected a quick response.
"Yeah…maybe you're, I do not have vampire Alzheimer's," Angel started to answer with a nervous sigh before what Lindsey had said hit him and he nearly shouted out the rest.
"You could be right, but then again with everything that you've missed lately it's not looking to good for you," Lindsey said back with an unsure look on his face as he shook his head and took a deep calming breath.
"I'm fine, it's just been to calm lately and I'm out of practice, this case for Willow is just what I need to get my edge back," Angel said with a nervous but hopeful look on his face as he pushed his chair back and then stood up.
"Perhaps, whatever it is just don't forget to pick Charles up off of the floor on your way out, Fred's little announcement looked like it hit him pretty hard," Lindsey said over his shoulder, as Angel passed him, with a cheesy grin on his face before he stood up and followed Angel out of the office.
END OF CHAPTER 5