Underneath the Grief - Part 8
The landings are always the worst. Everything was black and then the world exploded into color and pain as we fell onto the hood of the Camero, magically back in the Wolfram and Hart garage. I bounced off the car's bonnet and onto the pavement below, Angel landing on top of me, his hard-as-rock head smacking me directly in the gut. "Oof," I breathed, pushing him off me and trying to stand up. It took three tries before I succeeded in being upright. Angel stood beside me, but Lindsey sat on the ground, clutching an ankle.
"Angel hair!" yelled Lorne, rushing over to us, Eve at his side. "We've got a major – hey, where's Gunn?"
Angel and I helped Lindsey up, slinging him between us and making our way to the lift. "He didn't come back with us," said Angel, answering Lorne's question.
"But," Lorne complained, "we never leave anyone behind."
Angel didn't answer and we continued helping Lindsey toward the lift. A loud booming came from the stairwell beside the lift, as if a very large animal were descending the stairs. Angel stopped cold.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," said Lorne. "The thing that's after Eve – it's here. It's a very tall, very strong, very scary, well dressed man."
I scoffed, "That doesn't seem so –" The stairwell door flew off its hinges and halfway from where it used to hang to where we were standing. Lorne's description of the man was surprisingly accurate. He was tall and slightly stocky, with a high forehead and a strong, square jaw. As he stalked over to us, Eve hid behind Lorne and Lorne hid behind Angel.
"Damn," said Angel under his breath, "he is well dressed." I shot him a mock-jealous look that might have been less than mock.
The man reached into his blazer and I prepared for a fight, setting my stance and getting ready to drop Lindsey. But instead of a weapon, the man pulled a sheaf of paper and a pen from his pocket. "Hello, Eve," he said in a pleasant voice. He held the papers out to her, and she took them, sighing heavily. "Sign here," he said, pointing to the papers, "and here, and initial here." Eve signed the papers grudgingly.
The man held his hand out to Angel, saying, "Angel! I'm Marcus Hamilton. Eve here has just signed over her liaison duties to me."
Angel looked at Eve, "I thought you said if the Senior Partners caught up with you, you'd die!"
"And now someday she will," Hamilton said, happily. "I'm very pleased to be on the team and I look forward to integrating myself into the proceedings here in LA! Angel," he nodded, "Spike, Lorne. I'll see you all tomorrow!" And with that, Hamilton turned on his heel and went back the way he came, up the stairs. The rest of us simply stood agog for a few moments, wondering what had just happened.
We gathered up in my penthouse to talk to Lindsey and treat our wounds. Eve clung to her man like she would drown without him while I called Fred up, and we all sat around the living room, waiting for her to bring medical supplies. When she came into the room from the elevator, I could tell she had been crying again. I found her like this less and less lately, which I took as a good sign.
"Hi guys," she said, less than her cheery self, but without sobbing, so that was progress. "How did it go?"
I stood up, wincing at the pain from my wounds that hadn't yet healed. I took the supplies from her and set them down on the end table next to the big armchair I'd been sitting in. "Fred," I said softly, leading her by the hands to the side of the room. "We got Lindsey out, but Gunn had to stay behind."
"What?"
"Gunn knew we would have to trade for Lindsey and he volunteered to stay behind."
"In hell? Why would he do that?" She looked ready to cry again, the tears gathering at her lower eyelids, shimmering at the edge.
"It's just a holding dimension," I said, downplaying the horror of the cellar. "And he felt like it was his fault that Illyria was introduced here, since he was the one that got it out of customs. He wanted to atone."
"He couldn't go to church or somethin' like a normal person?" Fred was actually crying now, but it wasn't the gut-wrenching sobs I had feared.
"You have to take your chances where you can get them," I said philosophically, though I wasn't sure I agreed with my own words.
Suddenly, Fred stood up straighter, stopped crying and said emotionlessly, "I did not know the dark one was responsible for my freedom." Her accent was completely different, lowering her voice and making her seem more regal. Great. Illyria was still in there. "If I ever see him, I would like to thank him."
"Sorry, Illyria," I said impatiently. "That doesn't look very likely. If one leaves the holding dimension, one has to stay behind."
"Hmm. I shall think on it."
"Great, you do that. While you're thinking, would you let Fred out again? I need her to treat our wounds."
"Very well, half-breed." Illyria was getting easier and easier to convince she should let Fred stay in control.
Fred's head dropped and she raised it back up again, slowly. "Sorry about that," she blushed. "Illyria likes to share her opinion on occasion."
"Are you okay?" I asked, putting my hand on the underside of her forearm.
"No," she said, pouting. "But I will be. I'm mad at Charles for staying behind, but I was also mad at him for signing those papers. So I don't know how to feel."
I glanced over at Spike, who was helping Lorne organize the first aid supplies. He had taken off his coat and over shirt, standing in his bullet-torn tank top. A thrill ran up my throat at the sight of his bare arms. "I know what that's like."
"Let's get you guys patched up." Fred, wiping away her tears, smiled at me and motioned for me to join the rest of the group.
"Yeah, thanks."
Fred sat me down on the coffee table in the middle of the room, and I took my shirt off so she could see the wounds. I caught sight of Spike's raised eyebrow and had to stop myself from smiling back at him. Fred looked down at me, not nearly as impressed as Spike, at least not that showed on her face. Some of the bullets had worked their way out already, but a few were still lodged in my chest. If I had been human, with a functioning heart and lungs, I would have been dead twice over. As it was, I was just in pain, bleeding a little bit.
"Okay," said Fred, snapping on a pair of gloves and picking up a pair of forceps. Something about that image gave me a nasty sense of déjà vu. I shrugged it off as Fred continued, "Let's get those pesky bullets out." I almost laughed. It sounded like she was inspecting a sliver in my finger rather than half a dozen bullets in my torso.
When she got them all out, Fred taped gauze over the worst of the wounds, and I slipped into the bedroom, grabbing a clean shirt. I found a smallish one of mine for Spike and took it out to him. No one needed to know that most of his clothes were already here. Fred was prying the last bullet from his back as I handed him the shirt. He took it and nodded with a grateful smile.
Carefully sitting down on an ottoman, I faced Eve and Lindsey. "Alright, Lindsey," I said, "we got you out of there. Now tell us what you know about the Senior Partners."
"What's to know?" he said from his lounge on my couch. "The Senior Partners are big, Angel. Bigger than you could possibly imagine. And this thing they've got you in…"
"This Apocalypse?" I asked, scoffing. "How is this one different from the one last year, or the year before?"
"This isn't an apocalypse, Angel. This is the Apocalypse, and it's already started." At my surprised look he scoffed, saying, "Just look around! I mean, how could you not have noticed? You're the big shot who's supposed to land on one side or the other, here. And I suppose we already know where the Senior Partners would like you to land."
"So giving me Wolfram and Hart, this is just a distraction, to keep us from seeing what's going on?"
"Bingo, big guy. Keep you busy while the world falls down around your ears."
"So all the deaths, all the compromises?"
"Only the beginning."
Silence suffocated the room as I looked at each of my remaining people in turn. Lorne looked scared out of his loud blue blazer. Fred was picking at her hands, which she held demurely in her lap. And Spike was looking back at me, like I was going to say something that would make it all better. Something that would stop the Apocalypse, the final battle, the end of the world. I had nothing.
These jobs, this life. It wasn't the first mistake, but it was the biggest. And the Senior Partners had forced me into it by dangling a new life for my son in front of me. Exactly the right carrot to get me where they wanted me. Distracted.
"C'mon Angel, you had to know this was coming." Lindsey prodded me with his words, almost gleefully. No, entirely gleefully.
"I knew. I just didn't think it would come so soon." Two hundred and fifty years and it wasn't enough. Not nearly.
"The world may be about to end," he said, "but that doesn't mean you can't still have a say in how everything ends up."
"What d'you mean, Lindsey?"
"You're a champion, Angel. You don't fight for the world the way it is, you fight for how it should be."
"How it should be. Right." What if I couldn't tell anymore how it should be? What if I didn't know?