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jmatonakMore violence...
The shippy bits are mostly in the last two chapters.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Angel
Angel paused to gather himself for a moment. He decided minotaur blood looked- and smelled- really terrible on a leather jacket. Squaring his shoulders, he turned the green knob and opened the door.
On the other side was a lawyer's office. Big desk, too many filing cabinets, a desk chair just a little bit fancier than the chairs intended for clients, and a diploma wall. To the right of the desk was a door. There was a closet behind the desk.
In a piece of glass on the closet door, Anya burned and screamed. Next to that, the other furnishings didn't make much of an impression. He crossed to her.
"Anya? Anya, what's happening?" She mouthed something at him. "Are you all right? Can you talk to me?" He ran his fingers over the glass- just as cool to the touch as it should be. His fingertips sparked.
"Ahhhh... this hurts so much...," Anya said.
"Thank god! How do I make it stop?"
"Tell me... aggh!... tell me to stop."
"Stop... burning?" He felt like a fool. Then she stopped.
"Oh, thank you. That's the best feeling ever. Or, well, it's close."
"How do I get you out of there?"
"I don't know. Be careful. Ambrose is around here somewhere. I think he shot Gunn, and he took Illyria into his apartment- that other door there. She was in bad shape."
Angel looked around. There was no sign of Gunn. "What about Spike?"
"Haven't seen him," Anya said.
"I have to find everyone. We'll come back for you as soon as we can, I promise." He ran into the apartment.
"If you say so," Anya said.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Backyard
Ambrose floated above his backyard pool and raised his face to the sun. He smiled.
His new wards were puffy and inefficient, but they'd do what he needed them to- Angel would expend energy knocking them down. Assuming he even got that close in the first place.
Ambrose was very pleased with himself. He'd imagined all sorts of Doctor Evil contraptions- a wooden-stake machine gun, a pool full of holy water. All ridiculous. He'd gotten confused by all the vampire crap and lost sight of the real issue.
He patted the lumps in his coat pockets. His ultimate artifacts were ready.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ambrose's Apartment
Angel could see immediately that the apartment couldn't be in the same building as the office. For one thing, it was too big. For another, there was sunlight peeking out from behind the blinds of the sliding-glass door.
Again, it was a kind of room he'd seen before. Flat-screen TV, check; leather massage chair, check; creepy altar in the corner with some kind of bas-relief snakes, check. The gaping hole in one wall was a custom feature, and he might have investigated it further if the blinds hadn't opened themselves.
Ambrose was smart enough not to hover in a spot that would block the window, but the time of day was wrong and Angel ended up on the safe side of the line between light and dark. The two men faced each other for a moment. Ambrose gestured and the glass door opened, letting in the breeze.
"I think you forgot to say 'ta-da'," Angel said. "It's traditional with this kiddie-show nonsense."
The door from the office to the apartment closed itself and locked with an audible click.
"I have to say," Ambrose said, conversationally, "I'm really looking forward to this. I was kind of half-assing my way through it last time, but now I'm psyched. Why don't you come out here, and then we'll shake hands and get started."
"Or we can skip the macho posturing and just kill each other."
"Yeah, okay." Ambrose took something out of his pocket and threw it. It landed well back of Angel, on the leather chair.
"Oh, come on. Grenades don't work any better than bullets do." Angel looked around for things to throw and tried to estimate if he'd survive in the sun long enough to tackle the guy.
"Oh, fragmentation, sure. I know. But that's an incendiary."
There was a click from the chair.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Kitchen
Illyria tried not to think about how ridiculous she must look crawling around on all fours on the kitchen floor. Instead she thought happy thoughts.
"Habaneros... under the eyelids." The wound was still there, but something about being Fred-shaped was holding it closed. At least she'd made the change on purpose this time. She tracked her own blood over to the counter and pulled herself to her feet. "Some kind of... live electrical wire running through the gums. Or something really... caustic, smeared over his junk." She needed to work on the irony part of his ironic punishment, she decided.
She heard voices and looked over toward the living room. "Angel!" Something shiny landed on the living-room chair, and Angel ran toward her, very fast, pursued by flame.
"Oh, dammit, I forgot about that," Ambrose said.
"Hey," Illyria said, and smiled.
"Hey. Good to see you." Angel looked around the kitchen and eventually spotted a tall closet, and the block where Ambrose kept his good knives. In a cacophony of snaps and crunches, the entire wall facing the backyard threw itself into the air. Sunlight streamed into the kitchen, catching the very tip of Angel's shoe as he stood inside the mop closet.
Ambrose started to laugh. "What's next, a pillow fort? You're a sitting duck." He threw another grenade.
Illyria caught it and ran. By the time it went off, she was in the pool. Angel raised his hand and threw three of the nastiest-looking knives in Ambrose's kitchen. The sunlight made his knuckles smart a little. It was hard to say for sure, but it looked like the knives were glowing softly.
Ambrose waved his left hand and deflected the one aimed at his eye. He waved his right hand and deflected the one aimed at his chest. That meant he was out of hands for the one aimed at his pocket.
A good knife thrown with vampire strength got in just far enough to puncture the metal casing of the last grenade. Under pressure, the contents squirted out and ignited. Distracted, Ambrose fell into the pool, struggling to get out of his jacket. He felt Fred's hands close on his neck from behind.
It would only take him a moment to use his wards to force her away.
Illyria didn't give him that moment.
Angel couldn't tell if that grenade stuff was burning underwater, but it was sure as hell clouding up the pool. When Illyria climbed out, he called out, "Good eye."
She grinned. "I was on the department softball team at UCLA for a couple semesters. We used to whomp the computer science people."
He looked her up and down. She had the blue tints in her hair, and Illyria's blue-all-through eyes, but she wore one of Fred's "work-cute" outfits and there was no trace of Illyria's armored carapace. "What's going on with you?"
"I'm not really sure. Can you kick your way through the closet wall? There doesn't seem to be a good path otherwise." She followed his gaze to the pool. "Oh, yeah, he's not comin' out."
"Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, his neck's about seventy degrees off from where it used to be. Maybe closer to sixty-five. More than pi over three radians, anyway."
"..."
"You're not really upset about that, are you? Truly?"
"...I guess not."
When they passed through the living room, she reached over a patch of flame, morphed into her carapaced form, grabbed the basin of green fluid (miraculously intact), and poured it over her side.
"Oww. Hot hot hot hot hot. Ahhhh..." She smiled. "I should really figure out what's in that stuff." She morphed back.
Angel opened the door back to Ambrose's office. To his vast relief, it worked.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ambrose's Office
Gunn came through first, re-opening the door with the green knob and collapsing into the desk chair. He half-expected to cough up the bullet, but instead he had to dig it out with a letter opener. By the time Spike came through, looking a little wan and muttering something under his breath ("everybody will forgive, and love..."), there was a nasty, bloody hole in Gunn's shirt but not in his body. The wound hadn't closed up as fast as before, but it had closed.
"I keep telling you, Charlie-boy- that's worn on the inside."
Gunn looked up from the folder he was reading. "I'm fine. It seems Ambrose had some materials on the Black Thorn. They were all protected from 'malefic' magic- hexes, curses, all that garbage. Didn't do jack about getting poisoned, shot-"
"- stabbed, crushed..."
"All of that stuff, yeah. But blanket immunity to bad mojo. And I think Angel got it too, by signing away his shanshu."
Spike considered for a moment. "Why's he still got his soul, then? Gypsy curse, right?"
"Pre-existing condition, maybe? I don't know. I'm pretty sure, now the sucker's in there, ain't a whole lot gonna get it out, including getting as happy as he wants to be."
The side door opened, Gunn and Spike looked over and saw Angel and...
"Fred?" Gunn asked.
"Illyria?" Spike asked.
Her face was sunny when she replied, "I don't think I want to pick. I don't think I have to." She gave everyone a moment to let that sink in while she took in the scene. "My gosh, Charles. What happened to your shirt?"
"Got shot. What happened to you?"
"Pretty girl saved me from the monster," Angel said. He sounded bemused.
"Well, you still did most of the saving." She could almost see Spike's mental shrug as he looked at her. Even Charles' agitation was more or less the good kind. She was thrilled.
"I'm pleased you're all still alive," Anya said. "And quite a bit surprised."
Gunn cleared his throat. "I've been reading up on you too, Anya." He picked up a thick book. The pages were modern acid-free paper, and it was library-bound, but the writing was disturbing. Some of the characters seemed to move. "We could break the glass. If we broke it enough, you'd be freed and... pass on."
"Fuck that," Anya said pleasantly. "Between us, the people in this room know everyone. Someone will know how to fix this. I might even work out some improvements in stamina and flexibility. Not that I would need much, but every little bit helps."
"Uh... yeah. There might be another way. I've been poking around in this stuff, don't ask me how-"
"That's the dragon's heart," Illyria interjected. "Siegfried gained the power to speak all languages- 'all the tongues of birds and beasts.' You didn't get the whole heart, so enjoy it while it lasts."
"I guess I will. But anyway, there's a way to put Anya's spirit into another body- a dead body- and have her animate it. It becomes an exact duplicate of her original body, indistinguishable in every particular."
"Good," Anya said. "I dislike the social implications of being a zombie."
"The only problem is, it requires a source of enormous magical power. Now, there's got to be something like that around here somewhere..."
"Ambrose mentioned Angel had power stolen from the Senior Partners," Illyria said. "He's my nominee for body donor, by the way. Does the body have to be intact?"
"Actually, I get the impression the whole thing works better if it isn't," Gunn grimaced.
"Wait, back up. I have power?"
"Oh, almost certainly," Anya said. "If those Black Thorn people had a collective agreement with the Senior Partners, any power they obtained under it would be given over to the collective and apportioned as they saw fit. If they're all dead, there's no one else to apportion it to and by default it all reverts to you. Like a tontine."
"What she said," Gunn said.
Angel blinked.
"Can we get started?" Anya said brightly. "This mirror gig is very unpleasant."
Chapter Thirty: Illyria's Room
Ostensibly, Spike came in to help her unpack. In the event, he didn't do much helping, but it was fun anyway.
"...the best part was when Angel stiffened up and keeled over on his face. Priceless. For a second I was hopin' I could keep him as a coatrack. That was brilliant."
"Boy, it took him a while to get back up, didn't it? I don't think we'll be seeing any more white flamey miracles for a while." Illyria chewed her lip. "Anya sure is a good kisser, huh?"
"Sets a lot of stock by it. And you gotta love the enthusiasm." He smiled, reminiscing.
She stared out the window. "I miss him."
"Yeh, that's painfully obvious. Seems to me you've got a pretty good idea where to look."
"He hates me. I'm the thing that killed his true-love- burned up her soul to take over her body."
"Sure, that has to be true. Because if there's one topic in the world that we can all make clear and definitive statements about, it's the metaphysics of the soul."
"He'll never forgive me."
"You have to stop listening to Angel so much. He rubs off." Spike cleared his throat. "In my experience, the people who love you will forgive you quite a bit, even when maybe they shouldn't. Take it from me, pet."
"He probably won't even talk to me."
Spike could feel himself getting a little irritated. "Oh, right, he don't wanna talk to you. That's why you put him in hospital three bloody great states away."
Her head snapped up. "Oh, like you're one to talk! Do you remember when you were a ghost? For hours- days- at a time, it was 'Buffy" this and 'my girl' that and 'oh, my Slayer is so dreamy-"
"Fairly sure I never said 'dreamy', Blue."
"It was strongly implied! And then as soon as you actually got a body, it somehow became more important to hang around giving Angel the business, and after all that talk about giving it to Buffy!"
"Oi! I never said anything graphic- was careful about that. Slayer wouldn't like it."
"There were a couple of late nights I think you're trying not to remember." Her lip quirked. "I'll go to mine if you'll go to yours."
He let breath out in a long, whooshy sigh. "Yeah, alright. But we should go together. Road trips go better with company." She couldn't decide if his way of asking without asking was more exasperating or adorable.
She hopped off the bed. "Okay. But we do mine first. Let's go get you packed."
As she turned off the light, she said, "This could be fun. You know, I'm not even really sure the world I sent us back to is the same one we left from."
Excitement already had him walking fast. "Is Buffy in it?"
"I'm sure she is."
"Good enough for me."
Chapter Thirty-One: A Quiet Little Neighborhood in West Covina
Angel sighed as he relaxed back into the plush upholstery. He loved this car. If he could've swung it, he'd have kept one of the planes, too. He looked over the dashboard. GPS seemed to be working.
He'd been a little upset to discover she moved, but not really surprised, given the situation. Fortunately, she was in the phone book.
Just a matter of getting everything squared away, he thought.
He'd thought, while everyone was working out the final details about Anya, that he might just save all that power he supposedly had and use it on himself. If he could turn a spirit and a rotting corpse into a living human, he ought to be able to do the same with a vampire. But it hadn't taken him long at all to see the flaw in that.
The only reason he had this power at all was because he'd signed away his option on a future humanity. If he used the power to make himself human, he'd violate that contract and the power would be taken away. Along with, he was sure, a substantial penalty. And he was utterly certain the Senior Partners had a few nasty curses ready to deploy on the off chance he became vulnerable again.
Once he figured out how to do it, he did make a few tiny improvements. He was pretty sure the ability to taste wine properly didn't count as a shanshu. Between that, a few other little things, and bringing Anya back, he seemed to have tapped himself out. Which was fine. He was still pretty much indestructible, and that was still pretty cool.
He glided to a stop and turned off the engine. Quiet as a whisper. God, he loved this car.
He really ought to get himself checked out somehow. Lorne probably could have done it. He missed Lorne. Was there some way to make it up to him? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. One abject apology at a time. He walked up to the door, bearing gifts, and rang the bell.
"Hello, Angel."
"Hi, Nina. May I come in?"
She cocked an eyebrow, took the flowers out of his hands, sighed theatrically, and said, "Sure, c'mon in." There were a few minutes of coat-getting, drink-mixing and polite chitchat. She was a good sport about his vanishing act when she heard a few of the details, which was encouraging. But eventually she leaned back a little in the chair opposite him, and he thought Here we go.
"I never used those plane tickets, you know. Cashed 'em in and bought an Aeron chair."
"You probably should have left. You could have gotten seriously hurt."
"I know. I heard the story." She tensed up. "Look, Angel, you're a great guy, and you would be even if we didn't have the creature-of-the-night thing in common. But you can't hide me in a closet every time things get tense at work."
"There was a little more to it than- okay," he said. He didn't need the air, but a deep breath still helped. "I admit it. I blew it there." Her pleased surprise was obvious. He pressed on.
"At first, I did what I do to make up for something. A lot of somethings. And then I did it for a reward. If I was a good kid, someone would give me a cookie. And then I started doing it because it needed to be done, but I had still had this idea in the back of my head that, sooner or later, there would be a cookie. And then I got into this latest round of stuff, and I signed a piece of paper that said I would never, ever get my reward..."
Nina leaned forward.
"And I was okay with it. It finally sank in that having a real life wasn't something that would happen to me later, after I did enough good deeds or cleaned up enough of this town. No one was ever going to show up and pat me on the head. I didn't need it- I didn't need cookies anymore.
"Look, I'm always going to have a dangerous life and there will always be people gunning for me. If you're in my life, they'll always be gunning for you, too. But, hell, everybody has problems, and I think my life could be really sweet with you in it. What do you think about that?" He looked into her eyes.
"I don't know. I want to. I'm not sure I could handle it forever," she said.
"It doesn't have to be forever. Helping the helpless doesn't have to be forever, and you and me doesn't have to be forever. But we'll be the ones who decide, not some Powers or demons or destiny."
She smiled and settled into his lap. She put her arms around his neck and said, "Then I think I want to try it for a little while."
The kiss went on for a hell of a long time.
THE END
I know what I hate, and I don't hate this. I'm really glad I finished it this time.
Now I have to think of a Buffy fic that will stay a Buffy fic. :)
The shippy bits are mostly in the last two chapters.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Angel
Angel paused to gather himself for a moment. He decided minotaur blood looked- and smelled- really terrible on a leather jacket. Squaring his shoulders, he turned the green knob and opened the door.
On the other side was a lawyer's office. Big desk, too many filing cabinets, a desk chair just a little bit fancier than the chairs intended for clients, and a diploma wall. To the right of the desk was a door. There was a closet behind the desk.
In a piece of glass on the closet door, Anya burned and screamed. Next to that, the other furnishings didn't make much of an impression. He crossed to her.
"Anya? Anya, what's happening?" She mouthed something at him. "Are you all right? Can you talk to me?" He ran his fingers over the glass- just as cool to the touch as it should be. His fingertips sparked.
"Ahhhh... this hurts so much...," Anya said.
"Thank god! How do I make it stop?"
"Tell me... aggh!... tell me to stop."
"Stop... burning?" He felt like a fool. Then she stopped.
"Oh, thank you. That's the best feeling ever. Or, well, it's close."
"How do I get you out of there?"
"I don't know. Be careful. Ambrose is around here somewhere. I think he shot Gunn, and he took Illyria into his apartment- that other door there. She was in bad shape."
Angel looked around. There was no sign of Gunn. "What about Spike?"
"Haven't seen him," Anya said.
"I have to find everyone. We'll come back for you as soon as we can, I promise." He ran into the apartment.
"If you say so," Anya said.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Backyard
Ambrose floated above his backyard pool and raised his face to the sun. He smiled.
His new wards were puffy and inefficient, but they'd do what he needed them to- Angel would expend energy knocking them down. Assuming he even got that close in the first place.
Ambrose was very pleased with himself. He'd imagined all sorts of Doctor Evil contraptions- a wooden-stake machine gun, a pool full of holy water. All ridiculous. He'd gotten confused by all the vampire crap and lost sight of the real issue.
He patted the lumps in his coat pockets. His ultimate artifacts were ready.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ambrose's Apartment
Angel could see immediately that the apartment couldn't be in the same building as the office. For one thing, it was too big. For another, there was sunlight peeking out from behind the blinds of the sliding-glass door.
Again, it was a kind of room he'd seen before. Flat-screen TV, check; leather massage chair, check; creepy altar in the corner with some kind of bas-relief snakes, check. The gaping hole in one wall was a custom feature, and he might have investigated it further if the blinds hadn't opened themselves.
Ambrose was smart enough not to hover in a spot that would block the window, but the time of day was wrong and Angel ended up on the safe side of the line between light and dark. The two men faced each other for a moment. Ambrose gestured and the glass door opened, letting in the breeze.
"I think you forgot to say 'ta-da'," Angel said. "It's traditional with this kiddie-show nonsense."
The door from the office to the apartment closed itself and locked with an audible click.
"I have to say," Ambrose said, conversationally, "I'm really looking forward to this. I was kind of half-assing my way through it last time, but now I'm psyched. Why don't you come out here, and then we'll shake hands and get started."
"Or we can skip the macho posturing and just kill each other."
"Yeah, okay." Ambrose took something out of his pocket and threw it. It landed well back of Angel, on the leather chair.
"Oh, come on. Grenades don't work any better than bullets do." Angel looked around for things to throw and tried to estimate if he'd survive in the sun long enough to tackle the guy.
"Oh, fragmentation, sure. I know. But that's an incendiary."
There was a click from the chair.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Kitchen
Illyria tried not to think about how ridiculous she must look crawling around on all fours on the kitchen floor. Instead she thought happy thoughts.
"Habaneros... under the eyelids." The wound was still there, but something about being Fred-shaped was holding it closed. At least she'd made the change on purpose this time. She tracked her own blood over to the counter and pulled herself to her feet. "Some kind of... live electrical wire running through the gums. Or something really... caustic, smeared over his junk." She needed to work on the irony part of his ironic punishment, she decided.
She heard voices and looked over toward the living room. "Angel!" Something shiny landed on the living-room chair, and Angel ran toward her, very fast, pursued by flame.
"Oh, dammit, I forgot about that," Ambrose said.
"Hey," Illyria said, and smiled.
"Hey. Good to see you." Angel looked around the kitchen and eventually spotted a tall closet, and the block where Ambrose kept his good knives. In a cacophony of snaps and crunches, the entire wall facing the backyard threw itself into the air. Sunlight streamed into the kitchen, catching the very tip of Angel's shoe as he stood inside the mop closet.
Ambrose started to laugh. "What's next, a pillow fort? You're a sitting duck." He threw another grenade.
Illyria caught it and ran. By the time it went off, she was in the pool. Angel raised his hand and threw three of the nastiest-looking knives in Ambrose's kitchen. The sunlight made his knuckles smart a little. It was hard to say for sure, but it looked like the knives were glowing softly.
Ambrose waved his left hand and deflected the one aimed at his eye. He waved his right hand and deflected the one aimed at his chest. That meant he was out of hands for the one aimed at his pocket.
A good knife thrown with vampire strength got in just far enough to puncture the metal casing of the last grenade. Under pressure, the contents squirted out and ignited. Distracted, Ambrose fell into the pool, struggling to get out of his jacket. He felt Fred's hands close on his neck from behind.
It would only take him a moment to use his wards to force her away.
Illyria didn't give him that moment.
Angel couldn't tell if that grenade stuff was burning underwater, but it was sure as hell clouding up the pool. When Illyria climbed out, he called out, "Good eye."
She grinned. "I was on the department softball team at UCLA for a couple semesters. We used to whomp the computer science people."
He looked her up and down. She had the blue tints in her hair, and Illyria's blue-all-through eyes, but she wore one of Fred's "work-cute" outfits and there was no trace of Illyria's armored carapace. "What's going on with you?"
"I'm not really sure. Can you kick your way through the closet wall? There doesn't seem to be a good path otherwise." She followed his gaze to the pool. "Oh, yeah, he's not comin' out."
"Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, his neck's about seventy degrees off from where it used to be. Maybe closer to sixty-five. More than pi over three radians, anyway."
"..."
"You're not really upset about that, are you? Truly?"
"...I guess not."
When they passed through the living room, she reached over a patch of flame, morphed into her carapaced form, grabbed the basin of green fluid (miraculously intact), and poured it over her side.
"Oww. Hot hot hot hot hot. Ahhhh..." She smiled. "I should really figure out what's in that stuff." She morphed back.
Angel opened the door back to Ambrose's office. To his vast relief, it worked.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ambrose's Office
Gunn came through first, re-opening the door with the green knob and collapsing into the desk chair. He half-expected to cough up the bullet, but instead he had to dig it out with a letter opener. By the time Spike came through, looking a little wan and muttering something under his breath ("everybody will forgive, and love..."), there was a nasty, bloody hole in Gunn's shirt but not in his body. The wound hadn't closed up as fast as before, but it had closed.
"I keep telling you, Charlie-boy- that's worn on the inside."
Gunn looked up from the folder he was reading. "I'm fine. It seems Ambrose had some materials on the Black Thorn. They were all protected from 'malefic' magic- hexes, curses, all that garbage. Didn't do jack about getting poisoned, shot-"
"- stabbed, crushed..."
"All of that stuff, yeah. But blanket immunity to bad mojo. And I think Angel got it too, by signing away his shanshu."
Spike considered for a moment. "Why's he still got his soul, then? Gypsy curse, right?"
"Pre-existing condition, maybe? I don't know. I'm pretty sure, now the sucker's in there, ain't a whole lot gonna get it out, including getting as happy as he wants to be."
The side door opened, Gunn and Spike looked over and saw Angel and...
"Fred?" Gunn asked.
"Illyria?" Spike asked.
Her face was sunny when she replied, "I don't think I want to pick. I don't think I have to." She gave everyone a moment to let that sink in while she took in the scene. "My gosh, Charles. What happened to your shirt?"
"Got shot. What happened to you?"
"Pretty girl saved me from the monster," Angel said. He sounded bemused.
"Well, you still did most of the saving." She could almost see Spike's mental shrug as he looked at her. Even Charles' agitation was more or less the good kind. She was thrilled.
"I'm pleased you're all still alive," Anya said. "And quite a bit surprised."
Gunn cleared his throat. "I've been reading up on you too, Anya." He picked up a thick book. The pages were modern acid-free paper, and it was library-bound, but the writing was disturbing. Some of the characters seemed to move. "We could break the glass. If we broke it enough, you'd be freed and... pass on."
"Fuck that," Anya said pleasantly. "Between us, the people in this room know everyone. Someone will know how to fix this. I might even work out some improvements in stamina and flexibility. Not that I would need much, but every little bit helps."
"Uh... yeah. There might be another way. I've been poking around in this stuff, don't ask me how-"
"That's the dragon's heart," Illyria interjected. "Siegfried gained the power to speak all languages- 'all the tongues of birds and beasts.' You didn't get the whole heart, so enjoy it while it lasts."
"I guess I will. But anyway, there's a way to put Anya's spirit into another body- a dead body- and have her animate it. It becomes an exact duplicate of her original body, indistinguishable in every particular."
"Good," Anya said. "I dislike the social implications of being a zombie."
"The only problem is, it requires a source of enormous magical power. Now, there's got to be something like that around here somewhere..."
"Ambrose mentioned Angel had power stolen from the Senior Partners," Illyria said. "He's my nominee for body donor, by the way. Does the body have to be intact?"
"Actually, I get the impression the whole thing works better if it isn't," Gunn grimaced.
"Wait, back up. I have power?"
"Oh, almost certainly," Anya said. "If those Black Thorn people had a collective agreement with the Senior Partners, any power they obtained under it would be given over to the collective and apportioned as they saw fit. If they're all dead, there's no one else to apportion it to and by default it all reverts to you. Like a tontine."
"What she said," Gunn said.
Angel blinked.
"Can we get started?" Anya said brightly. "This mirror gig is very unpleasant."
Chapter Thirty: Illyria's Room
Ostensibly, Spike came in to help her unpack. In the event, he didn't do much helping, but it was fun anyway.
"...the best part was when Angel stiffened up and keeled over on his face. Priceless. For a second I was hopin' I could keep him as a coatrack. That was brilliant."
"Boy, it took him a while to get back up, didn't it? I don't think we'll be seeing any more white flamey miracles for a while." Illyria chewed her lip. "Anya sure is a good kisser, huh?"
"Sets a lot of stock by it. And you gotta love the enthusiasm." He smiled, reminiscing.
She stared out the window. "I miss him."
"Yeh, that's painfully obvious. Seems to me you've got a pretty good idea where to look."
"He hates me. I'm the thing that killed his true-love- burned up her soul to take over her body."
"Sure, that has to be true. Because if there's one topic in the world that we can all make clear and definitive statements about, it's the metaphysics of the soul."
"He'll never forgive me."
"You have to stop listening to Angel so much. He rubs off." Spike cleared his throat. "In my experience, the people who love you will forgive you quite a bit, even when maybe they shouldn't. Take it from me, pet."
"He probably won't even talk to me."
Spike could feel himself getting a little irritated. "Oh, right, he don't wanna talk to you. That's why you put him in hospital three bloody great states away."
Her head snapped up. "Oh, like you're one to talk! Do you remember when you were a ghost? For hours- days- at a time, it was 'Buffy" this and 'my girl' that and 'oh, my Slayer is so dreamy-"
"Fairly sure I never said 'dreamy', Blue."
"It was strongly implied! And then as soon as you actually got a body, it somehow became more important to hang around giving Angel the business, and after all that talk about giving it to Buffy!"
"Oi! I never said anything graphic- was careful about that. Slayer wouldn't like it."
"There were a couple of late nights I think you're trying not to remember." Her lip quirked. "I'll go to mine if you'll go to yours."
He let breath out in a long, whooshy sigh. "Yeah, alright. But we should go together. Road trips go better with company." She couldn't decide if his way of asking without asking was more exasperating or adorable.
She hopped off the bed. "Okay. But we do mine first. Let's go get you packed."
As she turned off the light, she said, "This could be fun. You know, I'm not even really sure the world I sent us back to is the same one we left from."
Excitement already had him walking fast. "Is Buffy in it?"
"I'm sure she is."
"Good enough for me."
Chapter Thirty-One: A Quiet Little Neighborhood in West Covina
Angel sighed as he relaxed back into the plush upholstery. He loved this car. If he could've swung it, he'd have kept one of the planes, too. He looked over the dashboard. GPS seemed to be working.
He'd been a little upset to discover she moved, but not really surprised, given the situation. Fortunately, she was in the phone book.
Just a matter of getting everything squared away, he thought.
He'd thought, while everyone was working out the final details about Anya, that he might just save all that power he supposedly had and use it on himself. If he could turn a spirit and a rotting corpse into a living human, he ought to be able to do the same with a vampire. But it hadn't taken him long at all to see the flaw in that.
The only reason he had this power at all was because he'd signed away his option on a future humanity. If he used the power to make himself human, he'd violate that contract and the power would be taken away. Along with, he was sure, a substantial penalty. And he was utterly certain the Senior Partners had a few nasty curses ready to deploy on the off chance he became vulnerable again.
Once he figured out how to do it, he did make a few tiny improvements. He was pretty sure the ability to taste wine properly didn't count as a shanshu. Between that, a few other little things, and bringing Anya back, he seemed to have tapped himself out. Which was fine. He was still pretty much indestructible, and that was still pretty cool.
He glided to a stop and turned off the engine. Quiet as a whisper. God, he loved this car.
He really ought to get himself checked out somehow. Lorne probably could have done it. He missed Lorne. Was there some way to make it up to him? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. One abject apology at a time. He walked up to the door, bearing gifts, and rang the bell.
"Hello, Angel."
"Hi, Nina. May I come in?"
She cocked an eyebrow, took the flowers out of his hands, sighed theatrically, and said, "Sure, c'mon in." There were a few minutes of coat-getting, drink-mixing and polite chitchat. She was a good sport about his vanishing act when she heard a few of the details, which was encouraging. But eventually she leaned back a little in the chair opposite him, and he thought Here we go.
"I never used those plane tickets, you know. Cashed 'em in and bought an Aeron chair."
"You probably should have left. You could have gotten seriously hurt."
"I know. I heard the story." She tensed up. "Look, Angel, you're a great guy, and you would be even if we didn't have the creature-of-the-night thing in common. But you can't hide me in a closet every time things get tense at work."
"There was a little more to it than- okay," he said. He didn't need the air, but a deep breath still helped. "I admit it. I blew it there." Her pleased surprise was obvious. He pressed on.
"At first, I did what I do to make up for something. A lot of somethings. And then I did it for a reward. If I was a good kid, someone would give me a cookie. And then I started doing it because it needed to be done, but I had still had this idea in the back of my head that, sooner or later, there would be a cookie. And then I got into this latest round of stuff, and I signed a piece of paper that said I would never, ever get my reward..."
Nina leaned forward.
"And I was okay with it. It finally sank in that having a real life wasn't something that would happen to me later, after I did enough good deeds or cleaned up enough of this town. No one was ever going to show up and pat me on the head. I didn't need it- I didn't need cookies anymore.
"Look, I'm always going to have a dangerous life and there will always be people gunning for me. If you're in my life, they'll always be gunning for you, too. But, hell, everybody has problems, and I think my life could be really sweet with you in it. What do you think about that?" He looked into her eyes.
"I don't know. I want to. I'm not sure I could handle it forever," she said.
"It doesn't have to be forever. Helping the helpless doesn't have to be forever, and you and me doesn't have to be forever. But we'll be the ones who decide, not some Powers or demons or destiny."
She smiled and settled into his lap. She put her arms around his neck and said, "Then I think I want to try it for a little while."
The kiss went on for a hell of a long time.
THE END
I know what I hate, and I don't hate this. I'm really glad I finished it this time.
Now I have to think of a Buffy fic that will stay a Buffy fic. :)
