Well, here's the next chapter of my "all human crapfic". Read the reviews if you want to know what that's about. I want to say thanks to everyone who sent me feedback and welcomed me back after the four month break I took. I really appreciate it! A note about this chapter...it's quite different than the prologue, and you're all probably going to want to throw things at me. This fic has quite a twisted plot, and the prologue was a bit of a teaser about what will come. This chapter is pretty much a character introduction, and setting things up for the rest of the fic. So please don't be annoyed with the lack of action.

Isis FG

Chapter 1

Sunnydale, four years later

The setting sun cast a low glow over the deserted beach as twenty-seven year old Liam 'Angel' O'Meara settled his tired and sweaty body onto the worn, rough stairs that stood as entry-way to his recently purchased house. For a moment, he simply stared out over the empty beach. So quiet, was all he could think. Such a difference from Los Angeles and all of the exotic places he had traveled. But then, that was what he'd been searching for. Years of the fast life had taken their toll, bringing a weariness he couldn't have anticipated. Now all he wanted was some peace and quiet.

He loved his job. Truly. Being a photographer was all he'd ever really wanted to be. There was something mesmerizing about being able to take a camera, really only a hunk of plastic and metal, and snap an image of something that would last beyond the subject. In the five years since he had graduated from college, he had been able to travel the world, plying his trade, seeing the beautiful; places, people, animals, and the horrid; natural disasters, poverty, famine. It had been an experience he wouldn't exchange for anything, but he'd also learned that traveling the world, through time-zones, traipsing around jungles, up mountains, eating out of cans by campfire, and all the rest, weren't what he wanted to spend the rest of his years doing.

Most of his life had been spent in nomadic existence. Traveling from place to place with his father, a tried and true archaeologist, he had never really had a home. His father, the only parent he'd ever really had, lived on the go. Angel had no memories of his birth mother. She'd been an undergrad student assisting on one of his father's digs in North Dakota. Their passion had flared bright and faded quick, and when the dust had settled, a baby boy had been left, his mother more interested in living her life than in being a mother. Despite the desertion and the circumstances, Angel's father had never held it against him. He'd taken the child with no regret and continued on with his life, going from dig to dig, lecture to lecture, and being both father and mother.

Angel could say little bad about the way he'd grown up. He'd enjoyed the digs as a child, and inherited his father's interest in the past. Before he was four years old, he'd visited more places than a child's mind could comprehend. It had been exciting and fascinating. And he'd always been full of questions. No, he hadn't minded the way his father lived. And then, when he was about five, came the trip to Texas.

They'd gone so his father could give a lecture at a small university, and in turn had dined in a small restaurant where a pretty young waitress named Amanda had served their food. They'd gone back to that restaurant every night, and when their scheduled week trip was up, they'd stayed. Two months later, his father had married pretty Amanda and settled his family into a small house outside of town. Ten months later, Angel had a baby sister named Winifred. That was the only time Angel could ever really remember having a home. But it hadn't lasted.

The need to dig, to dissect and study the past, continued to call to his father. He simply hadn't been suited to life in suburbia. He'd asked his wife to travel with him, to leave behind the home they'd built and the place she'd grown up in, and she'd considered, but in the end, it hadn't been meant to be. So after a short eighteen months, his father had packed up his life, and his son, and returned to the life he craved, leaving his infant daughter with his wife.

Angel knew his father had suffered, considered himself a failure, but he also knew Daniel O'Meara had done the best he could. They'd returned to Texas often, sometimes staying for only a couple days, sometimes for several weeks, but never permanently. He'd loved those visits, sleeping in a real bedroom, teasing his half-sister. He knew his father would have stayed if his heart had truly been on family, but his love for his work was too strong.

When Amanda had died of cancer, Angel saw his father cry for the first time in his entire life. The memory was seared into his mind, just as the realization of how much his father had loved his wife, and how much he'd hated himself for not being able to give her what she needed, had dawned on him. He'd been nineteen then, and had just started his freshmen year of college.

The death of his step-mother had changed his life in more ways than one. Angel thought of his sister then, as he stared out at the lapping waves of the ocean. Winifred, or Fred as she liked to be called, had been left motherless and broken hearted. With nowhere else for the fourteen year old girl to go, their father had brought her to Los Angeles, rented an apartment, and enrolled Fred in school. The three of them had lived there together, though his father still continued to travel, leaving Fred in Angel's care. He hadn't minded overmuch. He loved his sister. It was that simple.

Only a year later, they'd faced death again, finding themselves having only each other after their father was killed in a car accident while on a lecture tour in New York. They'd cried and grieved on each others' shoulders and, in the end, picked themselves and done what had to be done: gone on with life.

After four years in college, and once Fred was eighteen and starting college herself, Angel had taken after his father and traveled the world as part of his job. London, Paris, Venice, jungles in Africa, the Amazon, one forgettable week in Antarctica, and everywhere in between. He'd seen them all. And after five years of being a nomad, much as his father had been, he'd found it didn't suit him. He wanted a house, somewhere to return to each night, somewhere to, hopefully, one day raise a family.

So he'd quit his job working for National Geographic and bought a house in the small town of Sunnydale, California. His sister thought he was nuts. Maybe he was. He hadn't really taken time to consider the decision; he'd just done it. So far he hadn't regretted it. So far. Of course, he'd just started moving into the house today, so he hadn't really yet had time to have second thoughts.

Standing, Angel walked a few feet away from the house and turned to gaze up at it. No, he didn't have any regrets. This was what he wanted.

He watched Fred walk out of the house and come stand beside him. Her arms crossed and lips pursed as she, too, looked at the old Victorian. "Well, it's certainly your fixer-upper," she said at length.

Angel shrugged, unoffended. "It just needs some work. No one's lived in it for a while."

"I still don't see why you wouldn't stay in LA until the work is done on it," she replied, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Rolling his eyes, Angel stifled a sigh. They'd been around this argument enough times already. He knew she was just unhappy that he hadn't chosen to settle in LA near her. "The lease on my apartment was up." The same apartment he'd barely ever stayed in and which had only the meagerest of furnishings.

"I told you that you could have stayed with me."

"I know." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders in conciliation. "But I want to get settled, and Mr. Giles was ready for me to start my new job right away."

"I know. Sorry I'm being a pest," she apologized, leaning her head on his chest.

"It's okay." Angel gave her shoulder a squeeze. "And I'm only an hour and a half away from LA. That's closer than me being in Europe or Africa."

"True," Fred conceded, then stretched her back. "Ugh. I'm glad you didn't have a house full of junk to move in. The stuff you did have was a big enough pain to move."

"There are still all those boxes of Dad's in storage," he reminded her, referring to all the historical artifacts their father had collected throughout his career.

Fred cast an eye up at him. "You're hiring movers for those. There's no way I'm luggin' all those crates around."

Angel laughed and looked down at his sister. As he occasionally was, he was struck by the dissimilarity in their appearances. While he had taken after their father with his tall, muscular build, dark brown hair and eyes, Fred had followed after her mother's petite form and narrow face. The only trait they shared was hair color, and even then hers was a few shades lighter than Angel's.

"Though why you'd want to put some of that stuff out is beyond me," she went on. "Are you really going to put that old skull out for everyone to see?"

"This coming from someone who considered going pre-med?" he teased her. Fred was a whiz with science and medicine, but she'd never picked up on their father's interest in old bones, or displaying them.

"There's a difference between medicine and putting a bunch of bones on a shelf," she stated primly, laughter in her eyes at the old joke.

The two lapsed into silence as Angel went back to studying his house. It was a good place. Yes, it needed a bit of work, but when it was done, it would be perfect. Classic Victorian lines, two stories with a large attic space, and his favorite aspect, a widow's walk. He was anxious to see the repairs begin and then completed. Most of what needed to be done was some structural work and refinishing. Otherwise, the house was sound. He looked forward to seeing it completed so he could furnish it and turn it from a house into a home.

"Tell ya what," Angel finally said. "I'll spring for a pizza for dinner."

Fred rolled her eyes. "So generous of you."

"Just for that," he answered back, tugged on her ear. "I'm getting black olives on it."

"Not on my half, buster!" She elbowed him lightly in the ribs. "You can have them on your half, but not mine."

Angel's eyes twinkled before he laughed. He knew very well how much his sister hated black olives. She had ever since he'd told her they were lizard eyes once when they were kids and he had been visiting her in Texas. Who knew a seven year old would take to such a lie?

"How about pepperoni?" he offered in exchange.

"That's works. I'll go try to wash off some of this dirt while you order."

An hour and a half later, after having devoured a pizza and soft drinks, Angel and Fred were once again back on the front porch of the house. "Are sure you don't want to stay tonight?" he asked, worrying slightly about his sister driving home in the dark.

"Yeah. I have class tomorrow and I can't miss it." She wished she had a few days to stay with Angel, but she was coming up on her last finals ever and she couldn't even consider skipping class. "Are you sure you'll be okay here?" Doubtfully, she studied the old house.

"I'll be fine. Don't worry so much."

"I'll try not to, but you have to promise to call me if you need anything," she ordered, turning to face her brother.

"Deal." Angel gave her a hug before walking with her toward her car. "Drive carefully."

"I will." She climbed into her car, rolled down her window. "I'll call you tomorrow."

Angel stood and watched his sister drive away, feeling a pang of loneliness as her car rounded the bend and left his sight. He rolled his tired shoulders and turned to stare out over the ocean. The water had a different look at night with the moon reflecting off it. He'd have to take some pictures once he was a bit more settled in. But right now he was exhausted, and he still had to put sheets on his bed.

He gazed out over the water and sandy beach for a minute longer before shifting to head inside, never noticing the small, pale figure that slipped out of the woods and onto the jetty a hundred feet away.

TBC