Title: The Proper Authorities
Author: smolder
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Angel the Series belongs to Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt. Big Bang Theory belongs to Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. MIB belongs to Lowell Cunningham.

Chapter 1: The Proper Authorities

Her nails dug into his arm as he led her across the campus. He bit back a sigh, they had come a long way but he wasn't sure if this was the best idea. However, the higher ups had made the decision and she would go anywhere he took her without complaint.

When he had asked her about her instant trust in him her answer had been surprisingly uncomplicated.

"You have kind eyes," she said solemnly and paused a moment, "plus, I'm crazy." She gave him a slightly too wide smile.

Since he was helping her get cleaned up (she'd had a panic attack from what he had identified as the royal blue color of the nurses scrubs and wouldn't let anyone else but him see to her) after they had found her naked in an alleyway where they had pinpointed a massive amount of energy being released and the tearing of dimensional walls, he had decided not to argue.

Later, when she told them more about her life he was glad he hadn't.

After he had questioned her and reported to Zed, there had been a discussion on how to proceed. They dealt with aliens; this situation, oddly enough, was slightly out of their usual purview but there was no one else to deal with it. Not in this dimension at least.

The final decision, as it always seemed to be in the MIB when anybody had trouble dealing with things, was that she was to be neuralyzed and then set up with a new life. This was purportedly the kindest thing to do for the "damaged young woman" so she could start up a life without all of the horrible memories.

He knew from experience though that you couldn't really take someone's memory away completely, there would always be that deep feeling of wrongness. Part of you always just knew. He tried to fight against the ruling but eventually the best he could do was refuse to do it to her himself.

Sometimes he wonders why MIB can't just invest and get some good shrinks in the program.

Naturally it went badly; the neuralyzer had a truly bizarre effect on her. At the flash of the light her eyes became blue and she became very stiff and agitated. She threw the Agent in charge of the memory wipe across the room before crumpling to the ground clutching her head.

The man had a concussion and two broken ribs, one of which came very close to puncturing his lung. And that was because he was lucky and the agents here were taught how to fall in order to incur the least amount of damage while being thrown by a far stronger opponent.

Useful skill. Comes up far more often than one would think.

Since the neuralyzer didn't work on her their options were truly limited for what to do with a genius from another dimension who had gone through repeated mental traumas. But she had already lived in too many prisons throughout her life and he wasn't about to subject her to another one even if it was supposedly for her own good. And living in a room of a building that was fronted by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority ventilation station with nothing to do but be trapped in your own memories and the memories of a being older than mankind could easily become as much of a prison as a cave in a hell dimension.

Oryour body while it was being controlled by a Primordial Demon.

He walked down the hall in the residential section to her room the day after she had accidentally attacked the other Agent. He didn't place any blame on her for the incident and was frankly more pissed off at Zed for even trying it to begin with and quite a bit worried for her. She had seemed quite shaken by it afterwards.

She didn't answer the knock at the door. After trying again, he simply opened it - the doors weren't the sort that locked from the inside.

"Ms. Burkle…." he started, but stopped. She was crouched on the floor, writing on the wall, muttering to herself occasionally. One of her walls was already completely filled and another was about 2/3 the way there. There was a ripped open partially empty multi-pack of dry erase markers on the floor.

He wondered idly how she had gotten a hold of them.

Carefully stepping closer he examined the wall she wasn't working on. The math was an impressive ways above his head but interspersed within the equations were diagrams, words, and stick figure drawings. He thought some of the words were Latin, but dry erase markers and quick writing don't make for the clearest of translations. He felt more sure that one of the picture is of a man and woman riding a horse. Although he isn't quite sure what the man is since he has clearly drawn fangs in red marker.

Abandoning the wall, he turned back to the person to which the wall and inscriptions belonged.

Slowly he crouched next to her but she never even glanced at him. He looked over to what her hand was manically writing.

'Listen. Listen. Listen.'

She had written it for a good two feet of the wall already and showed no sign of stopping.

"Ms. Burkle," he began again placing a hand gently on her arm. She startled, which he had expected and skittered backwards her back hitting an, as of yet, clean wall as she clutched her green marker protectively.

"Fred," he tried addressing her a third time. She simply stared at him blankly for a few seconds, her eyes lost and body defensive, before launching herself into his arms and clutching him desperately.

"There isn't going to be a click is there?" she whispered nonsensically into his shoulder.

He simply held her and stoked her hair.

When the tech guys came in and studied her work they were impressed. It "showed very high understanding of the sciences for a human mind". But, then again, their tech guys weren't exactly human.

He didn't know if it was her obvious vulnerability that pulled at a part of him or her Texan twang that made him nostalgic. But he continued to spend time with her and it seemed to fill a hole that was left when Laura was forced to leave Earth. A hole he hadn't even been aware was there.

So, while Zed tried to come up with a Plan B for their resident genius who would occasionally have flashbacks and write on walls, he tried to take her outside of her current cave/prison once in a while.

And that in turn helped to take her out of her head a bit.

Sometimes it was just to the cafeteria for lunch or people watching at the Terminal.

He always quite enjoyed the fascination she got from listening to him tell her about the different aliens that caught her eye. Quite often she would go off on her own story about similar demons she had encountered. One significant time her body language had become stiff and she had told a six minute anecdote about encountering a race of slime based demons and how after they had denied to become part of her army, she had slaughtered them all and stacked their remains as a demonstration to all who would oppose her.

After the story was finished Fred couldn't stop shaking.

That was a bad day.

But, there were good days as well.

Days were she was doing particularly well and he was able to take her out of the building. Drive her to the museum, or out to a field in the middle of nowhere, a restaurant, anywhere away really. Armed with an emergency notepad and pens in case a memory was triggered and she had to get lost in the equations, and they were set.

That's why he's pretty sure this is partially his fault. If Fred and him hadn't gotten so good at as she put it, "workin' around my special brand of crazy and making it seem normal" everyone wouldn't think they could pull this off.

He knows MIB has the technology to set her up with a foolproof identity, that's not the problem. He also knows that she'll never run into problems with bosses - not only because she is brilliant, but because they make sure everybody knows it isn't in their best interest to mess with Dr. Burkle who has unknown but very deep mysteriously acronym-d pockets behind her.

The problem he runs into is Fred, living and working alone on a college campus.

Not that she would be truly alone, there would always be someone with an eye on her. She was important to MIB, to more than just him. As a possible future recruit but also, he knew, as a possible adversary.

But he cared more about the fact that she would be across the country from him, even if he did have the Ford POS (Piece of Shit) as J so wonderfully called it. He worried that without someone to continually pull her out of her room she would just make yet another cave for herself. He worried she might have an episode and revert back to Illyria. He worried she would have a hard time making friends with the limited amount of information she could tell people without them thinking she was crazy.

She turned to him suddenly and hugged him unabashedly. "I'll miss you K."

He sighed, used to the random hugging by now and stroked her hair, "I'll be around kid, you're not getting rid of me that easily."

Fred looked up at him and smiled a bit too wide but didn't say anything.

Maybe everyone was right and CalTech would be good for her, the first day of school was always the hardest on the parent after all.

A/N: This will be the only MIB heavy chapter so I considered it more of a cameo than a multiple crossover situation. The rest of the story is a Big Bang Theory/Angel the Series crossover fic like I sorted it.