The Wind Beyond the Walls of the
Mind
Chapter 10
"When you finally believe . . ."
by Gaius Petronius
DISCLAIMER:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on
the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Fox
and Mutant Enemy, Inc. This story can be read on its own or as
a sequel to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark"
from which the Ancient Ones, the Shining Trapezohedron and the
character of Robert Blake are derived.
The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind is set
roughly in mid-season four shortly following the death of Doyle
but before the creation of Adam and the death of Maggie Walsh.
This section is rated PG-13 for some raunchy
language.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The morning sunshine couldn't quite penetrate
the depths of the former Chase Mansion. Beyond the closed curtains
in the living room, there was evidence of the bright California
morning outside. Cordelia Chase sat sound asleep in her father's
wing chair. Beyond the entrance to the kitchen came the noise
of plates and silverware being set out on a table. In a few minutes
that was followed by the snapping and popping of bacon and eggs
cooking in a fry pan.
Although still half asleep, Cordelia stirred
slightly in the chair. Her little nose wriggled as she smelled
the cooking food. She then opened her eyes and rubbed her face.
She gazed around the room, remembering where she was and sighed
as if she had somehow hoped the dream would last a little while
longer. She stood up from the chair and stretched but covered
her mouth politely as she yawned. She walked through the open
doorway into the kitchen.
Angel, an apron wrapped around his waist, stood
in front of the stove as he stirred the pan full of bacon and
eggs over easy with a spatula. Cordelia stretched again in the
doorway and smiled.
"Nice get up," she said indicating
the apron.
"Good morning to you, too," Angel
said over his shoulder.
"Mmmm," Cordelia drew in through
her nose a deep breath of the cooking aroma, "Those smell
good. Where'd you get 'em?"
"I hit the mini-mart before dawn while
you were asleep," Angel answered not looking up from his
work tending the eggs on the stove in front of him.
Finally he turned down the gas on the range
and slid the bacon and eggs into a plate on the table. Cordelia
wandered into the kitchen and sat down in front of the plate of
food and a companion mug of hot coffee. Ravenous, she plunged
into her breakfast. Suddenly she looked up with her mouth full.
"Oh, did you want any?"
"That's okay," Angel grinned slightly.
"Oh yeah . . . I forgot. You're not going
to get all grrr! on me if you get too hungry are ya?"
"I stopped by Stan's Meat Market on the
way back," the vampire answered with a smile, "Stan's
always in there setting up early."
For a moment Cordelia contemplated Angel's
visit to the meat market, then shuddered.
"Oh . . ." she muttered ". .
. yech!"
Angel gave Cordelia a silent glare that said,
"Come on, we've been through this before!"
"Sorry," she answered sheepishly
to his reproving stare.
"Go on. Finish your eggs before they get
cold," he said as he turned back to the stove.
"Yes, Mommy."
Angel cast a glance over his shoulder back
at Cordelia whose smile broadened. She picked up the coffee mug
and took a sip, holding it out in front of her as if offering
a toast.
"You're okay, Boss."
Smiling himself, Angel returned his attention
to cleaning up the stove. Cordelia sipped her coffee and ate a
few more mouthfuls of breakfast. Angel poured himself a mug of
coffee and sat down at the other side of the breakfast table.
For awhile he stared silently over at the kitchen windows, the
curtains drawn shut, and contemplated the brightness of the light
that still managed to leak through around the edges. Cordelia
paused eating and followed his gaze. She looked silently back
at Angel. If he knew she was watching him, he gave her no indication.
"Angel? . . . " she said hesitantly,
almost in a whisper, "Did I ever tell you . . . I was sorry
. . ."
"Huh?" he replied quietly, his attention
on the sunlight broken.
"That I was sorry . . . you know . . .
for what happened between you and Buffy."
Angel stared back at Cordelia. He studied her
perky smile and realized how much he valued her completely up
front attitude that allowed her to say exactly what she was feeling
regardless of the consequences.
"No . . . you never did . . . thanks .
. . for saying it."
"I really am," she continued, "I
mean Doyle and I, we used to laugh and joke all the time about
you two but . . ."
Angel waited for Cordelia to finish the sentence
but she remained silent, staring herself at the diffuse light
slipping into the kitchen around the closed window curtains.
"Cordelia . . . ?"
". . . huh? . . ." she looked back
at Angel as if she had been gently woken from a pleasant dream
only to realize that she was back in the hard reality of the present.
"It's all right . . ." Angel said
softly, "I miss him, too."
Looking down at her plate, Cordelia pushed
the remaining food around aimlessly with her fork.
"Yeah . . ." she replied, "You
know, it took me a long time to finally realize what Buffy saw
in you. And it was Doyle who helped me see it. . . ."
"He was good that way. He helped me appreciate"
Angel smiled ". . . your finer points."
Cordelia grinned back at Angel. She shook her
head.
"Look at us," she said ironically,
"What a pathetic bunch of losers. Besides the fact that I'm
sitting here having breakfast with a vampire who's a great cook!"
Relaxed, Angel sat back in his chair and laughed
quietly.
"No really!" Cordelia continued with
a self deprecating humor that Angel had rarely seen, "I mean
me, I've a hopeless acting career . . . actually I got no career
at all! I work for a PI company that's losing money out its rear
end. We got a business number that's one digit different from
the Korean take out . . . I just lost a guy who could have been
the love of my life, and I never even knew it. We're sitting here
in my family's house that we just lost to the IRS. And now I got
some demon with three eyeballs throwing firebombs at me!"
For just a moment she paused and sat up straight,
announcing her next sentence with the perkiest voice she could
command.
"You think somebody's trying to tell me
something?"
Angel grinned and nodded his head.
"And you . . ." Cordelia said slowly
to Angel without any trace of sarcasm, "You lost your whole
world."
The grin left Angel's face as he stared ahead.
"Ever since Francis . . . I mean Doyle
. . . died . . ." she mused as much to herself as to Angel,
"Well, I've been able to see it in your eyes. I . . . I never
really looked before, but now I sort of understand what Buffy
probably saw. Why she loved you . . . cause she knew she was the
only one who could make all the pain go away."
Angel's gaze dropped to the floor as he sighed.
"I'm sorry, Angel," she said after
a long pause.
"Me, too," he answered looking back
up at her.
Cordelia took another sip from her coffee mug.
"What a bunch o' losers . . ." she
muttered.
". . . yeah . . ." he replied quietly.
Suddenly a loud knocking erupted from the outside
door to the kitchen. Cordelia and Angel both jumped in unison
and stared at each other. For a moment, neither moved.
"Oh! Yeah, the sunlight thing. I forgot,"
Cordelia exclaimed as she leaped up to check out who was at the
door. As she fumbled with the deadbolt, the door suddenly shoved
open and there standing in the bright morning
sun was Kate Lockley. She tossed her head authoritatively so that
her long blond hair swept across her shoulders. Shoving Cordelia
aside, she barged into the kitchen.
"All right! Where is he? Where's Angel?"
she asked brusquely as she pushed past Cordelia.
"HEY!!" Cordelia squalled.
"Easy, Cordelia," Angel said as he
turned in his chair to face Kate, "So, how'd you find us?"
"Your 'rogue demon hunter' is a moron!"
Kate announced as she crossed her arms over her chest.
Angel studied her up and down, a move that
Cordelia immediately picked up on and didn't like one bit.
"And what brings you to gorgeous Sunnydale?"
he asked as he continued to sip his coffee.
"Oh, just that half the precinct is looking
for you!" the LA policewoman answered dripping sarcasm.
"I'm touched. So what's goin' on?"
"You tell me!" Kate almost shouted,
and she tossed her head again to shake her hair off her forehead.
Quickly Angel held his finger up to his lips, urging her to keep
her voice down.
"I got reports you and 'Leggs' here were
tossing Molotov cocktails on the Santa Monica Freeway at two in
the morning!" she snapped in an exaggerated whisper.
Cordelia gasped at the insult.
"You know that wasn't us, Kate,"
Angel answered calmly and sipped on his coffee again.
"Oh no? Two eye witnesses and a cracked
up Beamer with a scorched paint job say otherwise!"
"Listen, Kate, we're dealing with something
here that's extremely dangerous. It's an entity that . . ."
Kate huffed in disgust. She almost threw her
hands up in the air and paced furiously in front of the kitchen
table.
"Not another one of your goddamn entities!"
she said, her voice rising as she grew more agitated with each
passing moment, "I've had it with you and your entities!
Every time you walk into my office, I get this sick surging in
my stomach, cause I know Hell is right behind you!"
"Kate . . ." Angel began in a voice
as soothing as he could muster. The police detective paid no attention.
Now face to face with Angel for the first time in weeks, she struggled
to suppress her welling emotions.
"I know what you are and I wish I didn't!
Crap, I wish to hell I'd never laid eyes on you! Then at least
maybe . . ."
Kate caught herself and stopped in mid-sentence.
Seething with suppressed anger, she still kept her gaze fixed
on Angel.
Angel stared her straight in the eyes.
"Kate . . ." he said slowly, "I
didn't kill your dad . . ."
At first, the look of fury on Kate's face was
unchanged. Then, slowly, as Angel stood up and spoke, Kate gritted
her teeth. Her breathing became shorter and shorter as if she
were suppressing a series of sobs. But her eyes, steely blue and
cold, remained fixed on Angel.
". . . I couldn't stop them . . . he wouldn't
ask me in . . ." Angel said as clinically as possible.
". . . damn you . . ." she cursed
under her breath as she realized she was on the brink of striking
out at him.
"He wouldn't ask for help. Not from anybody.
You know that."
"God damn you, Angel!"
"Not even from you . . . that's what got
him killed."
"Shut Up!"
Kate pulled back her clenched fist and swung
with all her strength at Angel's face. The blow connected squarely
against his jaw. Angel staggered back a pace but he didn't fall,
neither did he respond to her blow. Kate grasped her clenched
fist with her other hand and winced from the pain. She cursed
the truth under her breath and wouldn't look Angel in the face.
She breathed heavily all the while massaging her bruised hand.
Cordelia moved swiftly to Angel's side.
"Angel!"
"It's all right, Cordelia," he said,
rubbing his jaw.
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"You two got some issues here to straighten
out!" she said looking across the table at Kate who glared
back, "I think this is a good time for me to take a shower!"
"You do that," Angel answered, still
massaging his sore jaw.
"You guys play nice, now!" she said
over her shoulder as she left the room, "I don't want to
come back and find the place trashed! I mean, what would the IRS
say!"
"Promise," Angel dead panned her.
With Cordelia gone, Angel turned back to face
Kate. Regaining some of her composure, she still nursed her sore
hand.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"No," Kate wouldn't look at Angel,
"But that's no big news."
"Kate . . . " he said sympathetically
as he walked up beside her.
"Now what the hell am I supposed to do!
I've lost everything I got, just made an ass of myself in front
of you and now Internal's gonna demote me, putting me back on
the desk to 'cool off!'"
"Kate, you have to go on from here."
"He was the only thing I had left . .
. I'm alone now . . . completely alone," Kate said shrugging
her shoulders a she tried to hold back her emotions, "As
if I wasn't alone before when he was still alive!"
"Kate, you're never really alone,"
Angel answered but he could sense the words coming out hollow
even as he said them and regretted it immediately.
"Yes, you are! . . ." Kate lashed
out as she turned to confront him, "You, of all people, how
could you spout that bullshit!"
Angel couldn't answer. He shook his head because
he knew he had no answer. Kate tried to keep her steely blue eyes
fixed on him but she finally turned away again. Her emotions were
winning and she hated losing more than anything.
". . . damn it, Angel!" she whispered,
". . . why couldn't you have just gone into the fucking
room! . . ."
"You'll only know the answer . . . ,"
he said gently as he stepped up close beside her, "when you
finally accept, . . . when you finally believe . . . what
I am."
Angel and Kate's eyes locked on one another.
Shaking her head as if trying to deny what she knew, Kate lowered
her head as she realized her control was rapidly slipping away.
Angel slowly wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face
on his shoulder. Her brilliant blonde hair spread out like a silent
waterfall across his dark clothing.
". . . damn it. . . goddamn it . . ."
she whispered against his smooth leather jacket.
Angel held her tightly and said nothing. He
thought he heard a quiet sob but wasn't sure. Slowly she lifted
her head off his shoulder and stared him straight in the face.
". . . everything used to make a screwed
up kind of sense . . . on the force we all had our monsters and
demons to deal with but I could understand what they were and
where they came from . . . until you showed up."
Angel, his brow furrowed, stared back at her.
". . . And now none of it seems real.
Cause I can't figure out why the hell you even exist . . ."
Angel didn't break away from her gaze nor could
he respond since he had no answers himself. Kate pulled him in
close to her again and whispered in his shoulder.
"Damn you . . . you vampire bastard .
. ."
There was a long pause as neither she nor Angel
stirred from each other's embrace. Finally Kate lowered her arms
and stepped away from Angel. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve
and nodded at him, as her self confident swagger quickly returned.
"Well . . . now look what the hell you
made me do . . ."
"What?" he asked.
"Fucked up my mascara," she said
wiping her eyes again.
"Oh, sorry about that," Angel replied.
"At least I got all that crap outta my
system," she said flippantly, as she struggled to pass off
the last few minutes as nothing more than an embarrassing outburst
that should be quickly forgotten, "You got any coffee around
this dump?"
"Yeah, fresh pot," he answered with
a faint grin, "No donuts, though."
"Shut up . . . or I'll belt ya again,"
she answered quietly and tried hard not to smile.
Angel walked over to the stove and poured a
cup as Kate sat down at the table. He quickly slid the cup in
front of her and pulled up another chair. Kate leaned over the
coffee, took a big gulp and stared back at Angel. He returned
her glare.
"So . . . what are you doing here?"
he asked.
"Trying to come up with one good reason
not to haul you and 'Leggs' back to LA." Kate took another
swig of the black coffee.
"Her name's Cordelia."
"She's a cute little missy. You two got
a history?" Kate asked sarcastically.
Grinning, Angel shook his head.
"Then what? As a secretary she's hardly
any better than your 'Rogue Demon Hunter.'"
"She's one of the reasons . . . let's
just say she can see things. She can tell when something's coming
down."
"She's got contacts on the street?
Sweet thing like her?" Kate asked in astonishment.
"No, I mean . . . she sees things,"
Angel struggled with the explanation.
"Like what?
"She has visions."
"Aw, Christ!" Kate muttered in disgust,
rolling her eyes at the same time.
"Hey, you wanted to know."
"Maybe you better start at the beginning,"
Kate said as she leaned back in her chair and nursed the last
few swallows of coffee, "Seems every freak show I end up
with in my lap lately, the trail leads back to you . . . and this
stinking little burg!"
"Yeah, Sunnydale . . ." Angel mused,
"Different kind of place."
"So start talking," she said expectantly.
"It's a long story, Kate."
"Hey, I got time," she said smirking
as she glanced over at the draped windows with the light leaking
in around the edges of the curtains, "And you sure as hell
aren't going anywhere!"
Angel grinned back at her.
"I especially want to hear about this
. . . Buffy person. Whenever I stumble over one of your stinking
entities . . . that name keeps popping up."
"Well . . ." Angel stared up at the
ceiling as he sat back in the chair, "Once upon a time .
. ."
Listening intently, Kate leaned forward across
the kitchen table and drank in every word as if she were a traveler
parched with thirst and lost in an unseen endless desert.
* * * * * * * * * *
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