Disclaimer: I don't own Angel, Buffy, Charmed, or Prison Break. I'm just peeing in a lot of different peoples' pools.
Nota Bene: This is probably me making an ass out of myself, but this chapter assumes that you've read chapters 13-15 and 19 of "Trinity". I've tried to write it so you can get by without familiarity with the other fic, but I don't know how well it worked. And thank you to Imzadi, for the review.
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She bobbed just beneath the surface of consciousness, slipping down to the dark depths only to dream and then rise again. Something kept her from emerging from that inky pool—something that alternately tinted the world around her until everything was shrouded in a haze of red and filled her head with white static. Drugs, maybe. Or a spell.
"…healed her cheekbone. Gabriel completely shattered it."
"I knew the man was an ass, but I never thought he'd do something like this. What set him off?"
"The Oracle was in possession of a prison doctor's body…"
Lightning exploded in Cass's retinas.
"Oh, God, she's seizing again!"
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Waves struck a sandbar, spilling their energy before running almost lazily up onto the beach where four men lay. The Oracle trickled in on the water, swirling with the sea foam as it soaked the body of Michael again and again. Beyond him, Lindsey and Lincoln Burrows lay in a tangle of limbs and sea weed. The fourth man she didn't know, but he wore the uniform of a prison guard.
The waves dragged her out and then in again. This time, Michael groaned, as she flowed over and around him. The sound stilled the fear in her gut that he too had died on her watch. He pushed himself up on to hands and knees and began coughing up sea water. Then, the tide pulled her back out into the ocean.
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"She's still burning up—if this fever doesn't break soon, it'll kill her. Has there ever been a…case like this before?"
"A few."
"Did they survive?"
A cold hand on her cheek, so very remote from where she floated and yet it still chilled her to the core.
"None of them did, did they?"
"Some went mad and had to be put down—it was a mercy. Others…to be so close to the Radiance and then have it so suddenly yanked away…"
"They committed suicide, Leo. Just say it. Dancing around the issue isn't going to help her any."
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The dreams returned in nightmarish flashes, too fragmented to comprehend. Blood and gurgling water. Light filtered through stain glass and the musk of wolf. Soul-splintering screeches and long stretches of dusty road. Cass grabbed at the pieces, trying to hold on to them long enough to form some sort of coherent whole, but they all vanished like vapor as she closed her hands around them.
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"What'd you say?"
It took the Oracle a moment to realize that she was, finally, awake. She opened her eyes, and the world slowly took focus. She was in the Hyperion (she recognized the wallpaper from her earlier visits to see Connor). The room was dark except for the soft yellow light coming from the lamp on the table beside her bed. She felt sticky and drained as if she'd just run a marathon. Or been stripped of my immortality, she added sourly.
A hand brushed her arm, and she looked over to the other half of the bed. Connor Angel lay on his side atop the bedspread, watching her intently with shadowed eyes. His lower lip had been split and was now halfway healed. "How long have I been out?" Her voice came out in an embarrassingly frog-like croak.
"Long enough for me to get my stupid ass arrested walking down to the corner store. Dad and Cordy broke me out."
Cass screwed her eyes tightly shut in the hopes that when she opened them again, this would all have gone away. Maybe she'd fallen asleep at her desk and was right now drooling all over a stack of very important files. That would be so much nicer than having just gotten an innocent woman killed, having misplaced one, two, three of her charges, and having the fourth tell her that in her absence, he'd been picked up for murder and saved by another Higher Power.
Except, she wasn't a Higher Power anymore.
She opened her eyes again and looked down at her hands. As small as ever, but the skin was a rich olive tone that she hadn't seen since she transferred to the HR office and gained the power to shapeshift. Panicked, she swung her legs over the bed, intent on getting to the mirror in the hotel room's attached bath.
Her legs collapsed under her, and she fell to the dusty carpet, knocking her elbow on the bedside table.
Sheets rustled behind her as Connor slid across the bed. "You okay?" he asked as he gently wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her back up onto the bed, half on his lap. She was shivering, Cass realized, as he held her steady, and the world was doing a swooping thing that reminded her all too much of the night they'd met. She had let him goad her into a slugging match that had ended with his father throwing her into a wall. She'd ended with a ceramic shard from a lamp buried in her back. Seemed like she was always doing something to humiliate herself in front of her charges.
Well, except for Lindsey, but that might be because he frustrated the hell out of her. Cass spent more time trying to get to him than actually guiding him. Like right now, she had no idea where he was. The only clue was that beach from her dream. Something deep inside was telling her that what she'd glimpsed was more vision than dream. Christ, she hadn't had prophetic dreams since before she died. Hadn't Gabriel promised to strip her of all of her powers?
"I need to get to a mirror," she said, trying to stand again.
Connor helped her to her feet, keeping his arms locked across her chest so she wouldn't go tumbling. "I think you need to go back to bed," he muttered.
"And I think you need to get me to a mirror before I hurt you again."
He snorted. "Like the last time?"
"Hey, that head-butt had to hurt!"
"Very true, but it still doesn't explain why you're so desperate to get to a mirror. You've been sick for a couple of days and look pretty strung out. Maybe this isn't such a good idea." But he moved as he talked, helping her cross the distance between the bed and the bathroom.
The Oracle stumbled forward and grasped the edge of the sink, her stomach doing loop-de-loops. The movement made some of her hair swing forward into her field of view. Very dark brown, almost black, and hanging in crushed and matted waves. She swallowed and forced herself to look up at her reflection.
The face that looked back at her was one she hadn't seen since before the fall of Rome. It was a face she'd glimpsed from time to time in a puddle or still pool. Large brown eyes, glassy from sickness, stared back at her. Her features were drawn thanks to a childhood and adolescence of enforced fasting, but there was no mistaking the Mediterranean cast to them.
One hand stole up unbidden to touch the cheek that Gabriel had smashed. It was whole, but there was a residual ache, almost a phantom pain, lingering that made her snatch the hand away. Tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. Whether it was from the pain or exhaustion or just the hell of the past couple of days, she wasn't going to lose it in front of Connor. She'd stupidly shown her temper to him—he didn't need to see her tears too.
"What was that word you said earlier? When you were first waking up. Tri-something."
"What?" The question surprised her as much as it relieved her. "I don't…" Then, it came to her. The word she'd mumbled right as she passed over the cusp from asleep to awake. "Triune." She scrunched up her nose and looked at his reflection over her shoulder in the mirror. "Is that even a real word?"
"I think it's another word for "trinity"—a group of three."
The Oracle arched an eyebrow.
"I was going to Stanford before demons killed my family and pretty much waylaid my life." He shrugged. "Let's get you back to bed."
"So," she asked as he guided her back to the bed, "The cops still thinking you killed your folks and your sister?" Connor sat down on the edge of the bed as she settled, propped up against the headboard. Just the effort of walking to the bathroom and back had drained what little energy reserves she had. With a silent groan, she realized she probably should have used the toilet while she was up and about. Damn it.
"All the forensic evidence points to me. Luckily, I was just walking down the street when they arrested me. Nothing to connect me back to here."
Cass shook her head. "It's only a matter of time before someone from Wolfram & Hart tips the police off to the connection between you and Angel, as tenuous as it is…at least publicly."
"Which is why we were in the middle of moving out when Leo and the rest showed up with you."
"Who's Leo? And who are 'the rest'?"
"Leo's another Higher Power—Cordy's mentor apparently. He just showed up in the middle of the lobby with you in his arms and Lorne and Anya and Fernando in tow."
That made her sit up a little straighter. "Lorne's here? I need to talk to him."