Chapter Five
Angel awoke to find himself alone in his bed. His still warm and subtly floral scented bed. Slowly remembering the previous night, his first thought was that Babe had seen sense and hightailed out of there, away from the vampiric threat as quick as she was able. It was a good thing, he told himself. She could live her life away from danger, away from pain…away from him. Yes, that was defiantly a good thing, the smart thing for her to do…but if it was so good and so right why did his dead heart ache at the thought.
But even as the thought accrued to him the ache was quelled by a sound nearby. The soft insistent thumping of a human heartbeat.
Letting out a sigh of…relief? Angel slipped out of bed and into his robe.
"Babe?" he called, as he wondered from the bedroom. He found her in the kitchen area. She was leaning against the sideboard with her back to him. Her breathing was heavy and her muscles tensed.
"Are you alright?" he asked and she startled, having not heard his near silent approach.
She jumped, turning to face him and fell. It was only his vampire speed that allowed him to catch her before she hit the floor.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he gently lifted her into one of the seats around the kitchen table. "You're too weak to be up and about."
"I just wanted to get a drink," she told him, slightly breathless and with a blush staining her cheeks. "I guess I got a little freaked when I saw the blood."
Angel followed her eyes to the fridge, where he stored his blood. "That must have been scary." he said remorsefully, he should have moved it, or at least warned her once she knew.
"At first it did," she admitted, "But then I remembered and…I don't know…it felt…natural, normal even."
"It didn't bother you?" he asked, more than a little shocked. Most people, most rational normal people would have run at the sight, but then again most normal, rational people wouldn't have asked a vampire to spend then night with them.
"Everyone's different," Babe replied with a relaxed shrug of her petit shoulders, "I'm not exactly a regular Joe myself."
"Who is nowadays," Angel found himself smiling in agreement.
"Angel…" Babe suddenly became serious. "Why are you helping me? I mean, what's in it for you?"
"Redemption," he answered, once again amazed by his own instant openness towards her. It was as if he couldn't - didn't want to hold anything back from her, completely trusting her expectance. "I told you last night. I have to atone for what I've done."
"So that's your deal? You help people because you used to be a creep?" Babe softly shook her head. "God, half the guys in this city should be running their own P.I companies." she added and Angel couldn't help the all to natural feeling laugh that came out.
"But I still don't get it," she continued when his laughter died down. "You were evil because you didn't have a soul."
"Yeah," Angel agreed, wondering what point she was trying to make.
"But our souls are what makes us who we are. Surely you're a different person now. So isn't it like you're paying for someone else's crimes?"
Angel smiled, touched by her near refusal of his dark side, but almost immediately the smile faded. "In theory."
"You don't believe that?"
"It may be true, but it wouldn't make a difference," he answered sombrely. "The soul…it's like my punishment. It forces me to be who I am now. Makes me remember all those I hurt, I killed."
Babe looked up into his deep pain laced brown eyes and a lump caught in her throat. Although she understood what he was saying, she refused to agree with it. She believed in paying for your crimes, but what he was saying meant he would be paying for them for the rest of his life. His eternal, never ending life. Surely no one, no matter how evil they had been, didn't deserve to suffer forever, without reprieve. Everyone deserved forgiveness, or at least the chance for it, if they found remorse and remorse was defiantly overabundant within him. She could feel it emanating out of him as truly as she could feel his cold skin even through the inefficient barrier of his robe.
But the price for his redemption…it was too high. For both of them. No, that wasn't an option. If only there was another way. A way to end, or even lessen the torment. A way to…
And suddenly she knew what she had to do.
Carefully she pushed aside his robe, exposing his chest to her touch and eyes. She moistened her lips before pinching the lower one between her teeth and laid her palm flat above his unbeating heart.
"What are you doing?" he asked, as her eyelids dropped closed.
"Shhh," she silenced him, keeping her lids lightly together. "Trust me."
He wanted to trust her. He couldn't see this delicate empath ever doing anything other than acts of kindness and good, but he was finding the unknown very intimidating. 'Maybe she's feeling for my emotions again,' he found himself thinking, after all it must be very worrisome for her. After all only a day ago she was in the clutches of a vampire boyfriend hell-bent on using her as a free delicatessen and here she was in the arms of another.
He opened his mouth to give her some words of reassurance, when he felt a warm sensation like he had never felt before, start creeping inside his body. It radiated outwards, in tender yet overpowering waves, from her touch and he couldn't help the gasp that escaped him. The warmth consumed his chest, growing ever outwards, creeping into his limbs and up his throat, filling him with a feeling like none he had felt before. It was safety and raw openness, venerability and comfort, passion and fear, all mixed together in a intoxicating drowning pool of heat. And as it clawed inside his head he was forced to close his now crossed eyes against the dizziness that resulted.
Then, suddenly it was gone. Babe's hand fell away from his chest and she dropped to the floor in unrestrained tears.
Shaking off his light-headedness, Angel sunk to his knees beside her, as fast as his tingling body would allow, and pulled her gently into his arms. Holding her gently, he rocked her as she sobbed.
"What did you do?" he asked breathlessly, his voice wavering with anxiety and shocked concern. Throughout his unnaturally long life he had never experienced a sensation like it.
Babe breathed deeply, trying to get her breath back enough to be able to answer him. Opening Angel's heart had drained much more of her energy than she had thought, or hoped.
After a long apprehensive moment she found her voice. "I wanted to…take them from you…The memories…of your victims…but I couldn't…I'm sorry…I wasn't…wasn't strong enough." she panted out between hiccups.
Angel had no clue what he had been expecting her to say, but it certainly hadn't been that. "Why," he frowned, "Why would you do that?"
"I wanted to help," she told him after a watery inhale, "Ease your suffering."
Angel eased her hair back away from her moist face. "You can't." he told her as firmly as he could master in his shaky state. "I'm supposed to suffer. If I don't then the curse is ineffective, no point to it." Even as he said the words another thought accrued to him and he voice it before he could stop himself. "You could have broken the curse."
"You can't live forever in all that pain," she argued in a solemn, drained voice.
"I have to," Angel insisted. "What I did to others is far worse than anything I'm experiencing."
Babe eyed him, unconvinced. Her pouting frown making her look like a child who'd been denied their favourite toy. She had never met anyone who wanted to suffer, welcomed it even. "Has anyone ever told you you're a tricky guy to work out? Maybe when I'm back to full strength I'll understand you better."
"Maybe you're not meant to understand everyone."
"No not everyone," she agreed. "…just you."
Angel's brow furrowed as his confusion and curiosity spiked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I've got to help you and to do that I have to understand you." she told him, cursing her mutinous tongue even as she did.
"I still don't follow."
"You got sent to me didn't you? With the visions?"
"How did you know that?" Angel asked, confirming Babe's suspicious.
"They talk to me too," she explained.
And with that, realisation hit Angel with full clarity. That was why she had recognised him when they first met, even though he had never seen her before. The Powers That Be had sent her to him, the same as they had sent him (via Cordelia) to her.
"They wanted you to help me?" he asked, confused as to why the PTB would offer any sort of assistance or liberation when he was still so far away from atonement.
Babe nodded.
"So they sent us to each other. Why?"
"You got me," she said with a small shrug. "They don't give me details, only orders."
"Orders?" Angel echoed.
"Yeah, don't you get orders?"
"Well I wouldn't call them orders, more like…clues, and they get sent to Cordy not myself."
Angel glanced at the wall clock, then carefully slipped his arm beneath her knees and the other around her back. He lifted her easily.
"Where are we going?"
"Downstairs. The others will be here by now. We need to sort this out."
…
In the reception area of the hotel, Angel carried Babe to one of the sofas outside Wesley's office and gently lowered her onto the cushions, getting her comfy just as Gunn strode through the double doors.
"Good morning my fellow demon fighters," he beamed brightly. Then, spotting Babe, he stammered. "And by demon I mean all those that-"
"It's cool, Gunn." Angel quickly cut off what no doubt would have been a very awkward and thoroughly unconvincing explanation. "She knows."
"It is? She does?"
"We've got to figure out what's going on," Angel explained, ignoring both of Gunn's unnecessary questions. He addressed Cordelia. "You had a vision about Babe."
She nodded in agreement.
"Babe had a vision about me."
That got everyone's full attention. "You get visions too?" Cordy exclaimed excitedly. "Do you get the headaches as well?"
Babe nodded. "Although I think one would pretty much finish me off right now. I've only had a few, well, actually just the same one, over and over."
"How long have you been getting them," Wesley asked, sitting opposite her and leaning forward so he could hear clearly without the weakened woman having to strain her voice.
"I'm not sure, maybe four or five weeks now."
"Try and be accurate, it may be important."
Babe thought about it. "Five weeks," she said with a confirming nod.
"So, you started getting these visions before Stan was turned?" Angel mused.
"Could it just be a coincidence?" Fred offered.
"I don't believe in coincidences," Angel said firmly.
"Me either," Wesley agreed.
Babe's eyes flittered back and forth over each of them. "So what are you saying?"
"I don't know," Angel told her, "But I will."
"I don't get it," Cordy piped up. "Why would the Powers send Babe a vision? I mean, what good would that do?"
Much to Angel's relief Babe didn't seem to bothered by Cordelia's lack of tact, she just explained simply, "I can sense emotion. Sometimes I can even ease them or even erase them completely. I thought that could be why I was sent here, to take away Angel's suffering, but he disagrees."
"I don't think The Powers That Be would go to this effort to make me forget about my wrongs. That doesn't make any sense."
"You think we should team up." Babe stated, fixing Angel with a knowing look.
He nodded. "You've got some pretty unique skills. I'd like to see what you're capable of when you're at full strength."
Babe smile with a blush.