20: Returning home

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Lindsey had been shown the ritual, and he gained Erica's access to the realm of lost souls. He tried to enter alongside her, but found himself barred. The wall became a wall again, and Erica was gone.

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The bodies of the ghostly beings were gone, but the blood remained. Two wavering forms stood in the doorway. Erica felt unafraid, and stepped forward to speak with them.

"Why do you look like ghosts?" she asked.

The man looked a little annoyed - the woman was impassive- but he answered the question. "We were slain by a servant of the underworld. Our powers are limited, but we can endure until you are ready to bear your responsibilities."

"We are not the Powers that Be," the woman explained, "merely their intermediaries, once called the oracles. Perhaps one day you will encounter the higher powers yourself."

Erica got the impression that she shouldn't waste their time. "I don't understand what happened to me when I used the portal."

"You are not supposed to traverse time," the brother said, "only reality. You altered your own reality, creating a new version that mimics the events of five years before your time, but you must return. You must make the portal, but the higher powers will guide you so that you return safely from whence you came. But you must learn to use the portals by yourself. Do not let yourself become distracted again." He seemed sterner than his sister.

"This reality is not stable." The sister said a little more gently. "It should not exist, save that all of our influence, yours included, made it so."

"So I haven't made any change to the past of my own reality?" Erica clarified.

"You have not. " the man answered.

"I'm sorry." Erica apologised, " If this reality is not supposed to be here then why did you help me make it? "

The woman answered her. "You would have been lost. At least the damage done here is repairable."

"How?" Erica asked.

"When ready, you will come back and repair the timeline that has been damaged." The man explained. Erica started to ask how she would be able to do it.

"By the time you return," the woman said before Erica could ask, "you will understand how."

"So for now it's just a loose end?"

The woman nodded. "In a way, yes, an unfinished strand of time and reality that can later be altered and resewn into the tapestry of life."

"What about the people here?" Erica asked.

"They are shadows of their true selves," the man said. "Echoes in time, now that it has been changed. You will repair that too. You must leave now," he said, cutting off further questions. "Create the portal, and you will be returned home."

Erica found a pool of water at her feet, and she nodded.

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"Her life in the new strand of time has finished." The sister said, once Erica had left.

"And so ends another life. It must be so, for she is not yet ready to sustain anything from the reality that did not already exist in her own."

"The life will return to her when she returns to reforge the timeline."

"It may, if she so chooses."

"A reward," the woman said.

"If she survives that long."

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Cordelia had been taken home by Lawson to lie down after having two visions in twenty-four hours. Angel and Spike had waited for about an hour in the office. It was still morning, but very nearly afternoon on the same day that Erica had left.

There was a sudden warmth in the air, and a portal swirled into life over where Erica had disappeared. This time she had help to control the portal, and so she emerged much more slowly and managed to land on her feet.

She didn't feel sick or off balance or anything. She sighed and smiled at Angel and Spike. "Hi guys."

"Where were you?" Angel said, as he came out of his office toward her. Spike had been waiting on the couch, reading through the newspaper to pass the time. He had stood up as the atmosphere changed.

"Good question," Erica said, checking the date on the newspaper, "but can I use the shower first?"

Angel nodded.

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Erica was brushing her hair as she came back into the foyer. She had followed Cordelia's advice and left a set of clothes at the office, so she had clean jeans and a t-shirt.

Angel was on the phone, so Erica sat down on the couch near Spike. He waited for her to say something rather than pushing her.

"Whatever happened to Lindsey McDonald?" she asked.

"He's dead… He hated Angel, tried to kill him several times, manipulated him a lot, and eventually one of our friends shot him to stop him from causing more damage."

Erica hid the hurt on her face. "Was he evil?" she asked.

"He was a lawyer."

"I'm serious. "

"Why do you ask?"

"I… I met him." Erica admitted, as Angel finished his phone call and joined them. "I met Lindsey when I went through the portal to about five years ago. He didn't seem so bad to me. Well, not all the time. "

The guys took a moment to absorb the information. "Yeah," Angel started saying, "he almost came over to our side at one point, then Wolfram and Hart tempted him with a lot of money and power. He chose them. Later, when he got his arm back, we had a truce for a while to help some victims of the law firm, then he left town and came back a couple of years later with more power and a grudge against me."

"So he almost joined you, but kept making the wrong choices." Erica tried to get it clear.

"You could say that." Angel agreed.

"So when exactly did you see him?" Spike asked.

"Oh, I helped him get his hand back"

"I was the one who removed it." Angel said.

"Yeah, that part bugged me." Erica said. "He was a human, and maybe he wasn't always a nice one, but how could you do that?"

"If I hadn't done it Cordelia would have died. Taking the hand was the least I could do; I could have just killed him. He was going to burn the prophecy that had the words to save her life."

"Oh." Erica was quiet for a moment. "I saw Cordelia too, in the hospital bed. That's actually where I got sent, to when Cordelia was in pain from her visions. It kind of makes sense because that's what I was concentrating on when I made the portal." She sighed. "I helped her so that it didn't hurt her but I wasn't strong enough to make her wake up. I guess I really changed that reality. The oracles told me that I accidentally made it into a new one." She shrugged. "At least I didn't screw up anything in this reality."

"So what's going to happen there?" Spike asked.

"I don't know. I guess it's going to continue on its course until I'm strong enough to fix what happened."

"What do you mean, fix?" Angel asked.

"It's already a different reality," Erica explained, "but not permanent and it's not supposed to exist. I think I'm supposed to erase it."

"An entire dimension?" Spike asked with some disbelief.

"Yeah, and everyone in it." She looked sad. "I think on some level I knew that, even while I was there. I knew I didn't belong. I didn't want to get attached to anything."

"So what else did you do there?" Spike asked.

"Got kidnapped twice, spent a night and a day in Wolfram & Hart's custody because I went there thinking you worked there, I got rescued twice by Lindsey, was thrown around a couple of times by both men and demons and survived another encounter with vampires." Erica said it lightly as though things like that happened every day.

"Lindsey turned against Wolfram and Hart for you?" Angel asked with raised eyebrows.

Erica nodded. "He even went to Angel Investigations for help to get me away from them."

"'Boy never could keep his loyalties straight." Spike said condescendingly.

"No," Erica agreed, looking at the floor. "But I wonder how he would have turned out…"

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One of them probably did it. One of them was the killer. They'd taken away the only thing she cared about. She was going to take her revenge on them and the people they cared about. They would pay in blood. If she had to suffer then so would they.

AN: I am evil, and therefore I'm leaving the Erica/Lindsey bit there… for a while anyway.

And so ends Part 3, 'Off the beaten path'. I don't know what I'm going to call the next part yet.

… Oh, hell, I'll give you one last mini-teaser chapter because I'm a softie, and because I started rushing the last two chapters to finish in time for exam revision. Maybe when I've got time I'll come back and try to polish them up a bit. (This is Erica's dream; it was never one of mine)

20.1: The first dream

Erica was angry, and the water churned and boiled beneath her body. The heat didn't even seem to damage her skin as she swam to the other end of the pool. She kicked at the water behind her and half-slapped it with her arms as she freestyle-swam from end to end.

It was nighttime, and some light outside gave her the ability to see, but the indoor lights were off. The blue tiles were light grey in the half-light. She had no idea how long she'd been swimming for. There was a dull ache in her body that was ignored in favour of her temperament.

At one end she almost didn't stop as she grabbed for the edge of the pool and pulled herself up and out of the water. The water sucked at her legs, pulling at her. She didn't let it hold her and pulled herself free of it. She was in control here, and no atmosphere would hold her against her will.

She realised that her anger had been weighing her down, or it had tried to. Again, she told herself that she was in control and the atmosphere became cooler and less heavy. She walked through an open doorway with exercise mats on the floor and boxing bags hung up at the end of the room.

She was dry, and she pulled a white t-shirt over her black bathers and pulled on some denim shorts. Barefoot, she ran toward a big, heavy black bag with red tape stuck at head-height. She jumped and slammed the bag with a back-kick. The chain broke and the bag tumbled to the ground and rolled to hit the wall.

She shrugged her shoulders, flicked her legs a little and rolled her head, trying to keep her muscles loose. She was strong here, and nothing could touch her if she didn't let it. Here, she was everything she wanted to be; super-athletic and powerful. She cart wheeled and back-flipped to prove to herself that she could do anything. She landed easily on her feet and approached the next bag.

It was blue and she started punching it. With her thoughts she made it tough enough that it could withstand her blows. She hit it and hit it and ignored the nagging feeling at the back of her mind. She wouldn't let it slow her down. She wouldn't let it affect her.

… Oh hell, she couldn't help it.

The bag split open and hundreds of seeds started spilling out of it to scatter onto the floor. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were bruised and slightly bloody. She had lost her focus and now she was hurt because of it. She took a step backward, holding her hands up in front of her.

"You've hurt yourself," a voice said from behind her. His voice rumbled pleasantly through her skin. Arms encircled her waist and pulled her to the person behind her. She knew who it was, but didn't want to admit to herself that she had let him find her here. She was supposed to be in control, but now she was found and bleeding.

"I didn't mean to let this happen," she said, still looking down at her bruised knuckles.

"You don't have to fight me," he said to her, "you'll have enough things to fight. I still want to help you."

"I wish you could," Erica said, still not turning to face him, "but you're so far away."

"I'm a guest here. But the longer you stay with me," he said, tightening his grip a little, "the closer I can get."

"Only if I let you. Why did you let me go if you knew I wasn't coming back?" she asked.

"I had to. I'd been selfish enough already. You needed to go home," he answered. "It would have been selfish to keep you with me."

Erica dropped her arms and turned around. She put her hands on his face and looked at his eyes. No trickery, no guile; nothing but clear blue-grey that caught her up and drowned her unhappy thoughts, sucking them from her mind to make them vanish, and making her feel better instantly. She kissed him and put her arms around his shoulders.

He let her finish before he pulled back again to see her face. "Do you forgive me?" he whispered, with his left arm around her waist and his right hand up at her cheek.

"Well, I'm in your arms, aren't I?" Erica replied with a smile and kissed him again.

"Was it really that easy?" he asked her, while playing with a loose curl of hair behind her ear. "To forget, I mean."

She paused. "I don't forget Lindsey, but I forgive. If we were going to live forever then it might be reasonable to hold a grudge, but it's not worth it. Not when I know you have my best interests at heart. I'll let it go. Don't let me go."

"I have to," he whispered, and gently kissed her forehead.

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Somewhere, in a reality that was never meant to be, Lindsey McDonald opened his eyes and whispered Erica's name.

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