Disclaimer: All characters and things from ANGEL and BUFFY belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. If they aren't on the show they belong to me.
Summary: A different turn of events after Season 1 Episode 12 "Expecting" A/C pairing
CHAPTER 48"Spike? What the hell are you doing here?" Angel asked, taking a step in front of Cordelia.
"I'd like to know the same damn thing." Spike said, angrily. "I mean, I think I did my part, and yet they send me to hell?"
"You aren't in hell." Angel told him.
"Just L.A." Lorne added.
Suddenly Harmony rushed into the office, a huge smile breaking across the vampire's face. "Blondie bear?"
"Oh now I know I'm in hell…" Spike said, backing away as Harmony ran forward with her arms stretched out, ready to embrace Spike in a hug.
To everyone's surprise, instead of hugging Spike, Harmony ran right through him. She then turned back to him, a confused look on her face. "Spike…you're a…a…"
"Ghost." Angel tried to hold back his amusement.
Spike turned to Angel, an angry look on his face. "Shut up ya big blockhead!"
"Okay, don't mean to interrupt but someone want to explain how the hell Spike got here? I mean, a ghost of a vampire? Psh…" Cordelia rolled her eyes, rubbing small circles on her round belly.
"Wow, Cordelia, you're looking plump." Spike grinned, causing the seer to look down at her stomach.
"She's pregnant, not fat." Angel defended his wife immediately.
"With yours this time, if I'm smelling her right." Spike said about the baby inside of Cordelia.
"Damn right it's mine." Angel said, angrily.
"Not the point." Jess interrupted. "Point is some crazy half-dead ghost of a vampire just suddenly materialized in my office."
Spike turned to Jessica, and he was impressed. Her long dark, curly locks fell across her shoulder and her eyes were so dark, so full of knowledge. He thought she was gorgeous. Why hadn't he noticed her when he first came into the room? "Who are you?"
"Jessica, Jessica Chase." Jess said, folding her arms across her chest. "And you're Spike I gather?"
"Damn right, gorgeous." Spike grinned at her. "Jessica…oh that's right, Buffy told me Angel's daughter had been stolen and came back as some teenager, I remember you when you were a little baby."
"That's funny, because I don't remember you, and usually when someone gets on my nerves, I tend to remember them." Jess said, a sly smile on her face before turning to face the rest of the group. "Again, someone want to explain how he got here?"
"He came out of the necklace thing." Gunn said, pointing to the amulet on the floor.
Spike looked down at the amulet and then back at Angel, anger crossing the blonde vampire's face. "That's right! This is you're bloody fault!" He pointed at Angel.
"My fault?" Angel was taken back.
"That's right! You brought that bloody amulet to Sunnydale, gave it to Buffy. You were the one who was supposed to wear it, until you got all girly and decided to come back to L.A. forgetting all about Buffy and your duties to the world." Spike told him.
"Buffy told me to come back here. She was the one who didn't want me wearing the amulet. I would have gladly put it on for her!" Angel argued back.
"Yeah, I'm sure you would have." Spike said sarcastically. "But nooo! The minute you found out I had a soul you were ready to push saving the world onto my résumé."
"Did you just say you have a soul?" Wesley questioned.
"And you saved the world?" Fred asked. "I thought that was Angel's jobs."
"Yeah well, the minute Angel found out that bloody necklace had the power to kill me, he took off sprinting." Spike said.
"I didn't know it was going to kill you, Spike. I had a feeling it might, but I didn't care. I would have died to help Buffy save the world. I wouldn't have given it a second thought, in fact!" Angel shot back.
"Oh really?" Cordelia slapped Angel's arm. "So leaving me pregnant and Jess fatherless never crossed you're mind?"
Angel realized he had screwed up big time, as he watched the tears form in Cordelia's eyes. Of course those things had crossed his mind a million times, that's why he had been so relieved Buffy told him to leave. He was just so angry with Spike that he forgot what he was saying. Before he could rationalize anything, however, Cordelia had stormed out of Jessica's office.
"Damn." Angel said, starring at the spot Cordelia had just been standing in.
Fred nodded. "You should go talk to her."
"I'm going to. In the mean time, someone try and figure out how the hell Spike got here." Angel said, making his way after Cordelia.
"Sure, we'll get right on it." Wesley said almost sarcastically, but Angel was already out of the office. "Okay, so anyone have a plan?"
"Fred's lab." Jess said. "Probably the best place to start if we are going to find out what he is."
"I know what I am! I'm a bloody ghost of a vampire with a soul who just happened to save the world." Spike told her.
"Right…" Jess said. "So, Fred's lab?"
Everyone nodded, agreeing with Jessica.
"Cordy…" Angel called out, following his wife down one of the many hallways of the law firm. He had almost reached her when suddenly she turned into her office, locking the door behind her.
"Cordy…" Angel pounded on the door. "Let me in! Cordy, I'll knock this door down, I don't care! You don't use this office anyway."
"Why don't you just go back to doing your stupid job?" Cordelia shouted from the other side of the door. "I mean, saving the world must be so much more important to you then me. Here's an idea? Give Buffy a call!"
"Cordelia Chase! Open this door and we will talk about whatever it is that's bothering you, but I'm not going to leave until you unlock it. In fact, you've got two minutes to unlock it before I just break it down." Angel told her. He knew he had messed up and he needed to make up for it, but he was not about to scream through a door so the entire office could hear him.
Finally, the door to Cordelia's office opened and she stood there, tearstains on her face, and one hand on her hip, the other rubbing circles on her belly, trying to calm down the baby inside. Angel said nothing; he just stepped in the office, closing the door behind him.
"Okay." Angel said, taking a deep unneeded breath. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" Cordelia huffed. "Are you kidding me? What's wrong is that the minute Buffy comes up in conversation between you and Spike you suddenly forget all about me and Jess and this new baby and are ready to die right beside her!"
"Cordy, yes I know what I said, but I didn't want to die, trust me." Angel told her. "I was willing to because I wasn't going to let Buffy risk her own life. I couldn't live with myself knowing I let her die. She doesn't deserve that."
"Oh, but me being left alone to raise a baby is okay…" Cordelia snorted.
"No, Cordy…Jess was here with you. I knew if I helped Buffy I wouldn't have left you alone." Angel tried to explain. "Believe me, I didn't want to leave you. It's the last thing on earth I would ever want to do."
"But you said you would have died for her to Spike…"
"Only because he gets me so frustrated." Angel clenched his jaw. "I just want to punch him in the face."
"So your little jealousy problems would have been enough to throw our entire family away?" Tears were rolling down Cordelia's cheeks now.
"No, Cordy…" Angel tried to wipe the tears away but she pushed his hand from her face. He sighed, digging his hands into his pockets. "Cordy, I love you. You know that, and I would have never done anything I didn't think would protect you in the long run. If Spike wasn't around then yes, I would have helped Buffy save the world, and probably died in the process, but Spike was around so he did it so that I didn't have to. I know you understand."
Cordelia nodded her head after a moment, a small smile breaking across her face as she wiped up her tears. "I'm just so emotional right now, I guess it's my hormones."
Angel smiled, pulling Cordelia close to him and planting a kiss on her lips before kneeling down so he was eye-level with her huge belly. He placed a hand on her stomach and began talking to the baby inside. "Hey in there, give your mommy a break okay? She's a tough lady but she can only take so much."
Cordelia rolled her eyes, laughing at Angel as he got to his feet. "Come on, dork. Let's go find Spike and the others."
Angel nodded, taking her hand and leading her out the door.
Angel and Cordelia entered Fred's office, hand in hand, to find everyone already there. Jess was sitting up on a lab table while Gunn and Wesley were on two chairs, and Lorne was leaning against a rack. Fred stood next to Spike writing some things down in a folder.
"So did we find anything?" Angel asked.
"Spike's not a ghost!" Fred blurted out.
"What?" Cordelia was confused. "I'm pretty sure he is one, Fred, usually only ghost's can walk through things."
"He's radiating heat." Fred told them. "Ghost are usually cooler then the area around them, but Spike, he's warm compared to it."
"So the question is, what is he?" Jess said sighing, and looking down at her watch. "And believe me, I'm just dying to find out, but I have a meeting to be at in twenty minutes, so excuse me, but I gotta run." She hopped of the lab table. "Keep me updated." She then quickly made her way out of the laboratory.
"You're daughter is a spitfire, Angel." Spike said, as he watched Jessica walk out of the room, admiring the curves of the young girl's body.
"Look at her again like that, and I promise you, I'll find a way to kick a ghost's ass." Angel said, not liking the look Spike was giving his daughter at all.
"Hey, she's got the goods, can't a man look?" Spike asked, knowing his words were ticking off Angel.
"No. You especially can't…ever." Angel said, he then turned to Fred. "So, if Spike isn't a ghost, someone want to tell me how he is still annoying the life out of me?"
"You're dead, pal." Spike reminded the other vampire.
"Not as dead as you." Angel grinned back.
"It looks like his essence is connected to the amulet." Wesley said, butting into the vampires' argument.
"And what in the bloody hell does that mean?" Spike asked.
"It means you're not a ghost. You're unique." Fred told him.
"Great." Spike sighed. "Like I haven't been that before. You'd think, after all the crap I've been through the last thing I'd be turned into was a ghost." He turned to Angel. "This was supposed to be you. You were supposed to wear that bloody thing…"
"Yeah, you said that before." Angel said, not wanting a reenactment of their earlier argument in Jessica's office.
"So then you were supposed to be a damn ghost. This is your destiny. I don't give a piss about that. I don't want any of this. I didn't get a soul to save the world." Spike said.
"Then what did you get it for?" Angel shot back, angrily.
"For the girl." Spike told him. "So Buffy would care for me, because she said she couldn't love me. The soul gave her something to love."
"She never loved you, Spike." Angel told the blonde vampire.
"How the bloody hell do you know? Me and her had something, and it wasn't the puppy love crap you and her had either. It was real!" Spike threw back at Angel.
"I bet." Angel clenched his jaw. "But news flash Spike, you slept with her, that's not love. That's…convenient."
"Right, you would know all about convince wouldn't you?" Spike grinned, looking over at Cordelia, who looked down at her huge belly when she saw the blonde vampire smiling at her.
"What the hell does that mean?" Angel slammed his fist down on the lab table in front of Spike.
"It means what it means you big sissy." Spike told the other vampire.
"How am I a sissy?" Angel asked.
"Oh please you're the biggest sissy going! I mean, you duck into hiding for years after you get your soul back, crying and whinnying and eating bloody rats, brooding about all the bad you did. Then you get a mission to help the slayer, and what do you do? You fall for her like a big baby, and then what do you do? You finally shag her and then go all-evil and try to kill her. Then you let her kill you, you bloody go to hell, probably cry there like a little girl so they finally couldn't take it anymore so they send you back. And then, when you do come back, you skip out of Sunnydale, running away from your problems like a little girlie-girl. Then you bone the first bitch of a cheerleader who walks into your office with half a brain." Spike said. "Me? I got me a soul, spent a few months going crazy, and then picked up my pants and saved the world."
"Cordelia's not a bitch!" Angel vamped out without even realizing it. "So you don't talk about her again. And thank you for relaying my life story to me, because I guess I wasn't there for it the first time." Angel's face relaxed back to its human form.
"Whatever you say, you big block, but I'm bloody the hell out of here." Spike said. "Bad enough I can't touch anything the rest of eternity, but like hell I'm going to hang around here with Angel-the-big-king-of-pansies."
"Great idea." Angel mocked. "Get out."
"Fine." Spike said, walking through one of the walls of Fred's lab.
When Spike was gone, Angel turned to Cordelia to see her a little shaken up from all Spike had said about her. "Cordy…"
"I'm fine, Angel." Cordelia tried her best to give him her famous smile. "Really, I'm okay."
"So, that's it?" Gunn asked. "Spike's gone."
"Looks that way." Angel said, wrapping an arm around Cordelia.
"Well good riddance." Lorne said. "That vampire was nothing like you, Angelcakes, he got on my nerves."
"Join the club." Angel said.
Jessica exited her meeting and made her way into her penthouse with a sigh. It had been a long day between Spike and the case they had earlier, plus the meeting she had just gotten out of. Talk about boring, she was not cut out for this job at all. She turned on the lights in the living room to find her mother curled up on the couch with a blanket across her big belly. Cordelia looked almost asleep, but quickly shot up when the lights came on.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." Jess said with a yawn.
"It's fine." Cordelia told her daughter. "I thought you were your father."
"Why? Dad's not here?"
"No, I had a vision, he and Gunn went to go take care of it."
"Why didn't he come get me?" Jess was hurt. After the day she had she was really in the mood to kill something.
"You're busy running a business now. Your dad doesn't mind doing the legwork. He likes helping the helpless." Cordelia told Jessica.
"What was the vision about?" Jess asked, sitting down next to Cordelia.
"A group of vampires down at a local bar. They were trying to eat everyone in there." Cordelia said, leaning back into the couch with a sigh.
"You feeling okay?" Jess asked her mother.
"Just tired." Cordelia said truthfully. "This baby is playing me like a drum set and today was such a long day, between the case, and Spike, and then Spike leaving…"
"Spike left?"
Cordelia nodded. "Your father and him don't get along. He's probably better off out of L.A."
Jess nodded, standing. "I could tell they hate each other."
"Not hate, they're just jealous of one another." Cordelia reached out a hand to Jessica. "Help your mom up."
Jess took Cordelia's hand and helped her to her feet.
"Hey Jess, honey, I'm sorry about being such a pain in the butt about this place. Maybe we are doing the right thing staying here, and I don't doubt that you have reasons of your own for taking the job here; I just hope they were the right reasons. And I hope one day you'll tell me what they were." Cordelia kissed Jessica on the forehead before waddling her way into her's and Angel's bedroom.
Jess sighed; images of Connor ran through her mind as her mother talked about the reasons Jessica had taken this job. She decided she was no longer in the mood to sleep so she made her way back down to her office.
Angel and Gunn entered the bar Cordelia had described in her vision to find five vampire's pinning some people up against the wall. They both moved in behind the vampire's stacking two each before the other's had the reflexes to turn around.
Three vampires did turn around, however, two tackling Angel, and one knocking Gunn down. Angel wrestled with one, managing to stake him and then kicked the other one off of his chest. Angel then rose to his feet, and turned to the vampire.
"I don't like being kicked around." Angel said, picking the vampire up and pinning him against the wall. "And I don't like it when you make a midnight snack out of half of a bar's customers, it's bad for business."
The vampire in Angel's grasp looked over to Gunn as he staked the vampire who had tackled him, and his eyes grew wide. "Mr. Gunn?"
Angel looked back and forth between the vampire in his grasp and Gunn. "What?"
"Mr. Gunn!" The vampire was more certain this time. "He's my lawyer!"
"Jimmy?" Gunn stared at the vampire for a second longer, and then a small smile broke across the young man's face. "Jimmy the Jammer."
"Jimmy the what?" Angel was confused.
"Jammer." The vampire still in Angel's grasp smiled. "It's my nickname."
"Okay…" Angel turned to Gunn. "How do you know him?"
"He's a client of ours." Gunn said. "Met him last week."
"A client?" Angel looked a Jimmy. "Our client, who was about to kill a bunch of people?"
"I was hungry." Jimmy said. "You can relate, can't you, big guy?"
"No." Angel said, staking Jimmy without another glance.
"Angel!" Gunn was shocked. "He was a client. He brought a lot of money to Wolfram and Hart."
"He was evil." Angel said simply, and then sighed. "This job is ridiculous. I can't answer any of Cordelia's visions without possibly killing a client, can I?"
"We just need to be more careful." Gunn told him.
"We just shouldn't have to be in this situation."
"We'll we are." Gunn told him. "Now come on, let's get back to the office so I can clean out Jim's file."
Angel nodded, following Gunn out of the bar.
Jess made her way into her dark office. She fumbled for the lights, and was surprised to see who was standing in the middle of the office when it lit up.
"Spike?" Jess questioned the ghost of the vampire in the middle of the room.
Spike nodded, not saying a word.
"I thought my mom said you left?"
"I did. Every bloody time I got to the city limits my ass was sent back here. It's like torture, believe me." Spike sighed.
"Probably because you're connected to the amulet. It's part of this company." Jess said, leaning against her desk.
Spike snorted. "Well, I don't want to be part of this company, and from the vibe you're giving off, you don't want to be either."
Jess sighed. "You're right, I don't."
"Then why not quit?"
"It's not that easy." Jess told him.
"Nothing ever is." Spike smiled at Jessica, but it faded as he watched the young girls head drop, her eyes locking on her shoes. "I've been where you are."
"Really? Where is that?"
"You're trying to find it. That missing piece that will make it all suddenly come together. You're waiting to hear that click…"
Jess sighed, a small smile breaking across her face. "That click came and went a long time ago."
Spike shook his head. "It didn't go anywhere, you just aren't listening hard enough anymore."
"Maybe. Maybe I'm just meant to lose."
"No. Someone like you, I don't think its possible for you to lose."
"Someone like me?" Jess raised an eyebrow.
"Buffy, the slayer that me and your father were both so fond of. You remind me of her. She had a fire, a passion, for what she was doing at one point, then she lost it. It took her awhile to get it back, but she did, not because she wanted it back, but because it was part of who she was. It made her a champion." Spike explained.
"What the hell does that have to do with me?" Jessica asked.
"You had a fire too. A flame that burned deep down in your soul. Helped you through things, kept your strong, made you believe in what you were fighting for. But you lost it, and now your lost without it."
Jess sighed, her thoughts again drifting back to Connor. "Well, I lost something."
Spike nodded. "But you'll get it back."
"I don't think so." Jess said, still thinking of Connor. No matter what she did she would never be able to get her brother back.
"Well, maybe not, but you'll find that flame again, because its part of who you are. You're a champion. I saw that in you, the minute I looked at you." Spike told her, truthfully.
Jess smiled slightly. "Thanks."
Angel entered his bedroom to find his bed empty and the shower in the bathroom running. He unbuttoned his shirt and entered the bathroom to find Cordelia taking a shower. He pulled back the glass door, causing Cordelia to jump, and almost fall, but with his vampire reflexes he quickly caught his pregnant wife, and stood her back up.
"Angel!" Cordelia screamed, pulling the glass door shut before he could blink, and quickly turning off the water. "What are you doing in here?"
"Well, I was going to join you." Angel said, taking off his shirt.
"Give me a towel."
"What?"
"A towel. Hello, I'm not standing here naked all night." Cordelia snorted from behind the glass.
Angel was disappointed Cordelia didn't want him to join her, but he did as he was told and handed her a towel.
"Thanks." She said, wrapping the towel around her hump of a stomach. She saw the look on his face and a smile broke across her own. "Don't look so sad, you don't want to climb in her with big, fat me anyway."
Angel's eyes immediately shot up to his wife. "You're not fat, Cordy. You're beautiful."
"Yeah, okay." Cordelia snorted.
"You are." Angel pulled her in for a kiss.
When they broke apart, Cordelia smiled up at him. "Thanks for that."
"Anytime." Angel smiled back at her.
"So, how'd the vision go?" Cordelia asked.
Angel turned away from her. "I killed a client."
"What?"
"One of the vampires in your vision was one of our clients. I killed him."
Cordelia looked down, fixing her towel so it covered both her breast, and large stomach. "Well, Angel, you did what you thought was right."
"This is just…it doesn't make sense. I work for the Powers and now I work for Wolfram and Hart, and gee what do you know, both jobs conflict with each other." Angel clenched his jaw.
Cordelia reached up, stroking his cheek softly with her hand. "Angel, we'll make this work. I know we will. Don't worry about it now. Okay?"
Angel nodded slowly.
"Good, now take a shower, you smell like stale beer and cigarettes and I can't say that it isn't making me sick to my stomach."
"Wouldn't want that." Angel smiled, placing his hands on Cordelia's belly before bending down to kiss it.
She giggled at him before motioning for him to jump in the shower and then making her way out of the bathroom.
Jess and Spike sat in her office for two more hours, talking about anything and everything. Their favorite movies, favorite ingredient to put in blood, what Spike had been like before he had been turned into a vampire. Jess enjoyed the blonde vampire's company, and could not see why her father disliked him so much.
But suddenly, Jess became silent as Spike turned the spotlight onto her.
"So, you grew up in a hell dimension, what was that like?" Spike asked.
Jess shrugged, the smile she had clearly gotten from her mother's genes fading from her lips. "It was…I don't know. Different."
"Well, I assume it would be." Spike said, almost regretting that he had asked Jess about her past. He saw how talking about it cut her deep.
"Yeah. It was very dark, cold, but mostly just dark. I wasn't scared though." Jess smiled fondly, remembering that Connor had been there with her all that time. "I was never alone."
"Right because bloody Holtz had taken you." Spike said, angrily.
"I didn't spend my time with Holtz, but if Connor hadn't been there I don't know what I would have done." Jess said, immediately realizing she had mentioned Connor when no one could even remember her brother.
"Who's Connor?" Spike asked.
"Um…" Jess stood, sighing. "That's a story for a rainy day. I should get to bed, it's late."
Spike nodded. "Jess, could you do me a favor?"
"Sure." Jess said, facing the vampire.
"Don't tell anyone I'm back. I made a mess of things down in Fred's lab and I'm sure they all hate me. Plus the whole humiliation factor once your father finds out I'm stuck here, I don't think I could deal well." Spike said, almost sheepishly.
"Your secrets safe with me." Jessica smiled at the vampire before making her way to her private elevator.
Spike stood there, long after Jess had left the room, a small smile dancing across his face. Maybe being stuck in L.A. wouldn't be so bad after all.