William had wanted to go with Angel.
To him, it wasn't even a choice. Even though Angel insisted that they needed to see the case through; that he had gotten the vision for a reason and that reason was important. Even though someone in that building needed some kind of help. Even though that person might die if they left.
Connor was dead.
Connor. Angel's only living family. His son. How could William not go home with him to make sure he made it there okay? To take him to the train station, make sure the windows were necrotempered, get him to the nursing home in the daylight, hell- how could he not simply sit next to Angel in his shock and grief and be there for him like family is supposed to be?
Calder had wanted to go, too, to his credit. But he had been more easily swayed to remember their duty. Their destiny. To remember that someone else might die.
As Angel had thrown his things back into his bag, he had fixed William with that hard glare of resolution that he normally only had to use on Calder to get him to listen, and when Calder had added his weight on Angel's side ("He's been riding trains since they were invented, Will, he'll get home fine"), William had finally, guiltily, given in. But not without two conditions.
"If we don't solve this within 48 hours, I'm coming home anyway," William said firmly, "and also: I'm calling my mum. She'll pick you up at the train station."
Angel had hesitated, looking like it took him great effort to process this information. Eventually, he'd said, "My car has necrotempered windows. I'll give her remote access. Tell her to meet me at the north entrance."
And then he picked up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and left.
Neither William nor Calder could sleep for hours after that. William had shed a few silent tears into his pillow on Angel's behalf, and the way that Calder sometimes jerked suddenly made him wonder if he wasn't doing the same.
Neither of them had known Connor well; just visited him sometimes with Angel. He had been a nice old man; perpetually happy because all of his memories were gone. All he could remember was what was happening in the present moment, and his present moments had been happy.
It was Angel that William's heart had broken for. William had known Angel since he was 9 and had come to look up to him as a father- or sometimes an older brother. Family, either way. William knew about the sacrifices that Angel had made for Connor. Terrible sacrifices of the kind that left other people dead, and the kind Angel would have done again in a second for Connor's health and happiness. William knew a lot about Angel, but he hadn't the slightest clue what Angel would do now. Who Angel would fight for to keep them healthy and happy.
Eventually, William was so tired that he dozed a little bit. When he woke up, it was a pale light outside and a little later than he expected because of the time change, but when he checked his Palm ring for the time, he saw that Angel's train would have only just left. He rolled over to see if Calder was awake yet.
"You going to call your mum?" Calder asked.
"Yeah," William said, tapping the ring to bring up a simple holographic projection of his Palm onto his actual palm. He hadn't wanted to wake her in the middle of the night when the first train West didn't leave until just after sunrise. William pushed his finger through his mother's name on his frequent contact list and waited for the gesture to take and go through before letting his hand rest on his pillow beside his head to talk.
When his mother answered, William explained in short, weary sentences that Connor had died peacefully in his sleep during the night and that Angel was on his way home.
"What time does his train get in?" Judith asked after she had absorbed the news with a sorrowful Oh god…
William told her and added that he had volunteered her to meet him.
"Obviously, I will," Judith agreed.
"Angel says he'll give you remote access to his car," William relayed. "Since it's necrotempered. He'll be at the north entrance."
Judith agreed and a moment later they hung up so that she could take a shower. In the silence, William sighed.
"Well," he said after a moment, "we'd better get up. I'm not wasting any more time here than we have to."
With that, he rolled out of bed and went to take a shower, too.
Everyone handles grief differently. Judith had been through it often enough to know this as solid fact. And though she had known Angel for several years now, and though he had rarely shown her any kind of true emotion, she felt fairly confident in guessing that his handling of grief would be...intense.
And she was right.
She had nearly capitulated under his glare to get the hell out of his driver's seat when she met him at the train station, but she held firm, telling him that she would not let him put other people in danger to get to the home a few minutes faster with reckless driving. Practically seething behind his stony expression, Angel got into the back seat and (Judith was certain of this although she couldn't see him), stared at the back of her head the entire way, egging her to drive faster.
She had to admit, she did drive faster. But still more safely than he would have.
She dropped him off at the entrance to St. Anthony's Retirement and Nursing Community and went to park his car (in the sun, just in case), and followed him inside.
Several years ago, at the start of their friendship, Judith had asked Angel to take her to this same nursing home in the middle of the night so that she could sit with her dying aunt. She'd had no idea that Connor was there at the time - or who Connor even was - and she had been too distracted to notice any clues that Angel was at all familiar with the place (if there had been any at all). Angel had been there while her aunt had died, a stable background presence as Judith went through that first acute wave of grief.
Determined to return the gesture of support - particularly now that they were friends - Judith went straight to Connor's room.
No one was there.
Of course, she realized, they would have moved the body to the mortuary. So after asking directions, she made her way to the basement level, which was just as nicely decorated if without the windows, and found the mortuary behind a set of nondescript doors. There was an empty office and a long hall, which she followed to a large, sterile room.
Angel was at the far end of this room sitting on a stool, holding Connor's pale, dead hand where his body lay on a cold bed. He was listening (or maybe not really listening) to a doctor explain what had happened, medically speaking.
Judith had missed the explanation because by the time she was in the room, the doctor was saying that she would let Angel have all the time he needed, but Judith assumed the explanation involved a lot of fancy terminology for 'he was over 200 years old so we've been expecting this for a long time.'
As the doctor passed her on her way out, nodding in acknowledgement, Judith found a chair and set it near the door. Judith didn't know much about magic and auras, but Angel's was strong enough that even she noticed that he didn't want anyone else near him at the moment.
So Judith sat down in the chair and just waited.
Calder did all of the talking at breakfast. He had always been the more social one anyway, but talking kept him from feeling, and he didn't especially want to feel very much right then. William had always been the better one with his emotions. (Who wouldn't, being raised by Judith Cole? Calder had picked up on a few emotional management tips from her growing up, but for right now he was favoring the One Thing at a Time approach.)
He talked mostly to the other breakfast diners, mostly young women and men in Watcher training who had early classes to get to. There was a table of girls whom he was told were Slayers - or Potentials about to be activated - but Calder did have enough social graces to know it would be weird for a 25-year-old man to plunk himself down at a table of teenage girls. Even if those girls could easily kick his ass for being a creep.
He hoped that William, who was sitting by himself near the Slayer table, was eavesdropping and not lost in his own emotions. He knew how William could get, and while it was great for him to be in touch with his emotional side and all, sometimes things just needed to be shoved down until the job was done. The sooner the job was done, the sooner they could get home.
The Watchers-in-training were a mixed bunch of people; lots of them pompous and elite but plenty who were just excited to be doing what they were doing and feeling good about their place in the world. All of them believed in their mission: training, protecting, and supporting their Slayer partners to rid the world of evil. It was pretty similar to how Calder felt about his partnerships with William and Angel. The teamwork and their mutual successes were a high that was better than actual drugs (which Calder had minimal, but not zero, real experience with). Calder felt most connected with the world when they were actually making a difference in it. He got that.
"You should consider applying," Fahid told him as he finished off his grapefruit juice. "If that's how you feel."
Calder wrinkled his nose before thinking better of it. "And spend my days studying and learning rules? No thanks, I was done with that when I finished uni. And I only went to uni because I had to. Besides, I've already been appointed as Champion. If the PTB wanted me to be a Watcher, I think they'd have said so by now.
Fahid shrugged. "It's never bad to be well-educated. I mean, your Seer gets visions, but what good are they if you don't know what they mean?"
That was too true, sometimes. Like right now.
"I guess," Calder shrugged nonchalantly. "But that's what places like this are for, right? I mean, your library's got all the information you could want, why bother memorizing it all?"
Gina, who was sitting next to Calder, snorted and replied, "So you don't have to carry the library with you into the field."
Calder shrugged again. "That's what Palms are for." He picked up his slice of toast. "Although," he admitted, "I guess there's plenty of restricted stuff that doesn't get uploaded, huh? I didn't see anything like a Restricted Section here, though." He took a bite of his toast. "They lock that stuff up, huh?"
"Of course," Gina replied. "Some stuff is on a need-to-kn0w basis. As it should be."
Calder grinned at her. "You can't just Alohomora your way in, Hermione?"
"Oh sure," Gina replied airily, "I just don't want to deal with the three-headed giant dog on the other side of the door."
The group laughed and then Fahid announced, glancing at his Palm bracelet, that they'd better get to class and the group dispersed, bidding Calder farewell. Calder waved and then took what was left of his breakfast over to William, sitting down next to him.
"So there is a Restricted Section here," he reported quietly. "But, like...we kind of knew there had to be…"
William nodded numbly. "The Slayers are weird," he said even more quietly, bending over his still-mostly-full plate, even though the Slayer table had already emptied. "They don't talk like normal teenage girls. Unless we're old enough now that we're totally out of touch with the young folk and can't understand a word they're saying…" He shook his head. "But weirdly, listening to them, I felt like I was the young one."
Calder frowned. "How?"
"Lots of 'the way things used to be' and 'in my day' and 'at home I never use to…'" William looked up at Calder, also frowning. "I think I must have misheard some of that, though, because they were talking pretty quietly. Which - not to stereotype - is also weird for teenage girls."
Calder nodded. "I did notice they were sitting weird," he said. "Really straight backs. I figured they were stiff from training."
"Could be," William agreed. "Training is hard work."
Hard, but fun, in Calder's experience. He nodded. "So what are our theories?"
"Well," William said, sitting up straighter in his seat. "Angel's vision said something dark is happening here, probably in one of the subfloors. And that there are lots of Slayers here, but now we know that's because they moved training here. The Slayers seem kind of weird. The curriculum is unexpected. And there's a Restricted Section of the library."
Calder nodded. "I haven't got shit either," he admitted. "I think we should just break into the basement and see what's going on."
"I agree," William said, surprising Calder a little. William was usually the voice of reason in these things. Calder sometimes had a voice of reason, but whether or not it got a chance to speak was another thing altogether. "But I actually wasn't done." (Ah, that was more like it.) "I think it means something that Angel saw lots of Slayers in his vision. The Powers usually give very relevant information, even if it's not always clear. I think they're part of this somehow. Especially since they're not exactly acting normal."
Calder nodded. That was reasonable. "Hey," he said, "what was the 'unusual curriculum' again? Technology, right?"
"Cultural studies and technology," William nodded. His eyebrows lifted, making connections.
"You said the Slayers sounded old," Calder said slowly.
William said, "More like I felt young, but yeah. You don't think those classrooms were for the Slayers, do you?"
Calder lifted a shoulder. "It's like we said last night, why do Watchers need to study technology? I mean, Slayers need to even less, right? That's what Watchers are for. To do all the studying. Slayers just have to train."
William frowned deeper, thinking. "I mean...that's kind of an antiquated notion. Why not prepare a Slayer as well as possible? Angel made us study demonology and languages when he was teaching us to fight. And that was even before we knew we were to become Champions. Maybe they're training the Slayers for HQ positions as well as field work."
Calder nodded thoughtfully. "Could be," he agreed. "Maybe they were IT classes."
William looked doubtful about this, but he shrugged. "Do ITs need to know the history of tech development and its cultural consequences?"
Calder yawned. "I dunno, man. Let's just break in downstairs, save the day, and go home."
William picked up his orange juice and finished the glass. "Okay," he agreed, standing up.
They went to put their trays on the rack to be wheeled away into the kitchen, agreeing that they both wanted to fetch breaking-in gear from their room first. When they got to the doorway that led to the hall, they found a tall young woman with dark braided hair and wearing workout clothes blocking the way. She leaned against the frame with crossed arms and gazed at them with narrowed eyes.
"You two are the worst spies," she said after a moment. "Tell me where you're breaking in and why, and maybe I won't break your arms in return."