I Will Remember You: Dracula Shmacula
by faith_slayer89
Ch. 10: Dracula Shmacula
"'Live as though the world were as it should be to show it what it can be'," Spike mused. "...What the bloody hell does that mean?"
"Hey, I'm just the messenger," Charisma shrugged. "Y'all are the ones with the universal knowledge; you figure it out."
"Are you sure this is the indicator as to what went wrong the first time?" Wesley asked. He, Giles, Gunn, and Doyle were crowded around the strip of paper Charisma had written Angel's words on.
"Pretty sure."
"And how'd you find this in the first place, hmmm?" Doyle asked, hoping to shed some new light on their enigma.
"Turned on the telly and a tape started playing a couple of seconds before Angel started speaking. My guess it was from one of those security cameras Wolfram and Hart set up when baby Connor was born. Y'all must've missed a couple."
"And who was Angel talking to in the tape?"
"Some kid with longish hair. I've never seen him before, but I'd take a guess and say it was Connor."
"Then this Connor's the key to all this, yeah?"
"Maybe," Gunn agreed. "He wasn't in the fight with us; maybe he was supposed to be."
"This is ridiculous!" Cordelia piped up. "We can't stand here speculating till the twelfth of never! Angel and Buffy are almost at the Hellmouth! Pretty soon they're gonna face the Guardian! We need her-" she pointed at Charisma- "back down there before then!"
"We send her back, then?" Xander asked the others.
"If it's the only way," Willow agreed hesitantly.
"Excuse me? She's standing right here! Send me back where?" Charisma narrowed her eyes. "Oh no. No no no no no, a world of no! I am not going back to that jerk's place! And anyway," she continued quickly, "the whole hard-to-get act's not gonna work this time. And you all know I can't take Angelus in a fight, I was a hopeless fighter when I was alive-"
"-You weren't hopeless," Giles argued.
"-And, okay, maybe I've gotten a bit better in the two-hundred-and-something-odd that I've been dead, but there's still no way I can take the guy in combat, so me going back there's really out of the question, and I-"
"Fine!" Cordelia interjected loudly. "Fine! You won't go back. But how else are we supposed to find out for sure-?"
"Ask Angel!" Charisma said quickly. "I'll go and ask him! He said the words, after all. Maybe he can tell us how they're relevant."
"Fine," Willow relented. "You go back down. Explain the sitch to Angel and see if he can find any connections. I need to cause a flood in the shrimp dimension..." She disappeared into the clouds, with Xander following, muttering nonsense about 'the world with no shrimp'. Cordelia and Doyle also left, as they had reservations on Cloud 9. One by one the Powers began to leave to tend to the affairs of the universe, till it were only Faith and Spike who remained.
"Someone's got a crush," Spike said softly, grinning. Charisma, obscured by several large clouds, changed back into her angel-wear. She shook her hair out of its ponytail and slid her shades back on in one move and turned to Faith.
"Who's the guy?" She grinned. Faith laughed.
"Not me, dork. You."
"Gah?" Charisma raised her eyebrows and looked from Spike to Faith.
"Come off it," the former vampire scoffed.
"Dunno what you're talkin' 'bout," she shrugged, and began to lace up her white knee-high boots.
"'No no no'," Spike began in a high-pitched voice. "'No, I won't go back!'"
"Very funny. Did you ever consider a career in acting?"
"'I really can't go back there, you see'," Faith chimed in. "'I'm a hopeless fighter, and I'll get myself beaten to a bloody pulp' and could you be more obvious?"
"More obvious about what?" She asked testily. Spike and Faith rolled their eyes. "Sorry, guys, but I'm having an attack of dumb blonde so you're really gonna have to explain this to me."
"You want Angelus," Spike said matter-of-factly.
"What? No! What? That's crazy! Completely insane!"
"The excessive protesting-"
"-What's wrong with me not wanting to get myself put in a body cast?"
"Maybe you feel you can't control yourself around him," Faith shrugged. At Charisma's outraged glare, she added, "Hey, I know how great a pull the dark side can have on you. And Angelus has the whole bad-boy thing working for him. Plus he's a hottie."
"Two and a half centuries, there oughta be some pent-up feelings of-"
"There's no pent-up feelings of anything! That's just- You're so- Completely missing the point. ...Do the rest of them know?" She asked, defeated.
"Should they?" Spike asked.
"Don't think so," Faith answered.
"Thank God," Charisma sighed.
"We any closer? We're not any closer, are we?"
"Who can tell?" Angel replied, exasperated. "With all the demons coming at us every five minutes, we might be going in circles for all I know- Buffy, to your left." Buffy spun around and staked the vampire that was trying to sneak up on her.
"Not very smart, are they?" She mused. "I think the heat's making them stupider. I know I've lost a few brain cells in this sweltering heat."
"Maybe we go left?" Angel thought aloud, lookng down at the map. "Or is it right? ...Wait, where's the path for the right? ...Oh, that's not a trail, it's blood. ...Okay, so we go either left or straight, but I don't-"
"You go straight," a familiar voice sighed patiently. Angel and Buffy turned to see Charisma, slightly downcast. This time, she was decked out in knee-high white leather boots and a white minidress.
"Right, we go straight and Angelus will be waiting to run us through with a sword," Buffy chirped. "Yeah, I don't think so."
"As per usual, you guys so don't get it." Charisma crossed her arms over her chest and gave them a withering look. "It was all a cleverly-made plan by the Powers so we could get the final bit of information we needed."
"Really?" Angel asked sarcastically.
"Yes, really," she replied testily. "For almost three hundred years, your buddy Angelus has been trying to maim me, kill me, win me over with his less-than-charming personality- do anything to make me fall from the Higher Plain. And every time he has failed."
"Except two nights ago."
"Actually, the score is still Charisma: four hundred and eighty-six, Angelus: zip. See, the Powers knew that Angelus had the missing piece of the puzzle, the reason why everything went to Hell in the first place. They used that Well of theirs and found out that the Senior Partners bestowed that knowledge unto Angelus. So I had to get into his apartment-"
"-You what?"
"-In order for me to find out what we needed to know!" She finished loudly, drowning out Angel. "Nothing happened," she assured them, but by the tone of her voice, Buffy wondered if the girl wished otherwise. "Anyways, I got the goods, but we need Angel's help to decipher this cryptic little message."
"What's the message?" Angel asked suspiciously.
"'We're champions'," Charisma began to recite. "'We live as though the world were as it should be to show it what it can be.' Ring a bell?"
"Wh-? ...That's what I told Connor...after..." Angel trailed off, leaving Buffy confused.
"I'm gonna need more to go on here," Charisma prodded gently. "I know the background story. But we need to know how the words are relevant. Does it mean that Connor is the missing link?"
"Who's Connor?"
"I don't think so," he replied slowly. "When I said that...I meant that he -well, all of us- had to live in a way- we do things to set an example," he began, trying to put his thoughts from so long ago into words. "You know, you do the good deed of the day, someone recognizes what you do, and they-"
"Oh!" Charisma exclaimed suddenly. "Oh! Oh my God, I know! I've got it! Oh my God!"
"Care to explain it to the rest of us?" But a light bulb when off in Angel's mind, as well.
"You mean-?"
"Yes! Yes! Oh, it's so- of course! It makes perfect sense! That's why everything turned out- Yes!" She screamed, pumping a fist into the air. "Oh...we have to do this now!"
"Do what now?" Buffy asked, feeling more confused.
"We have to send you guys back- now! While we remember..."
"But we're not anywhere near the Hellmouth, and the Guardian-"
"Screw the Guardian!" Charisma's eyes were alight with an odd kind of fervor. "You woulda beaten him, anyway. Dude goes by the name of Dracula," she added to Buffy's look. "No no no, listen. We have to send you back now, while the knowledge is still fresh in your mind! Then it won't fade in the time travel process..." While Charisma muttered excitedly to herself, Buffy turned to Angel.
"S'plainy?"
"'We live as though the world were as it should be to show it what it can be'," Angel repeated, smiling. "We go back, we fight. Others see us. They fight, too. Buffy, we're not going to fight for the world. We're going to show the world to fight for itself."
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