Disclaimer: You guys know the drill. The BTVS characters and their story lines from the show don't belong to me. The only characters I've invented Máire and her mother. The rest are the product of someone else's fertile imagination.
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Angelus paced around the factory. "If you keep that up, you'll wear a hole in the carpet and then the landlord will be right ticked!" Spike taunted.
Angelus ignored him and continued to pace. "I don't understand it. She was right there. I could have killed her in an instant. And I was hungry too. I wanted to break her neck and feed on her, right in front of the slayer so she could see how powerless she is to stop me. But I couldn't do it. It was as if she was protected by some force."
Across the room, Drusilla smiled and sang to Miss Edith. "Boys will be boys, Miss Edith. They will say sweet things to a girl, but they won't live up to their promises..." Drusilla turned and looked at Spike and Angelus. "Your little friend Buffy is vulnerable to attack, but you toy with her. I know you like the sport." She turned back to her dolls.
Angelus looked at her and then at Spike. He resumed his pacing, shaking his head "I live with a couple of crack pots."
Drusilla swung around in front of Angel and began moaning. "The visitor is not someone new. She's powerful. There are hands protecting her!" Drusilla began pulling at her hair. "There are hands that will choke us out! They will ruin our happy home!"
"What do you mean she's powerful?" Spike asked, looking intrigued.
* * *
Máire looked around the library at the confused faces looking back at her. She cleared her throat. Xander's hand shot up.
"In a manner of speaking a dead guy is your father. Oh, I get it, GILES is your father!" Xander looked pleased with himself for solving the riddle. "I didn't think SuperBrit had it in him to be randy!"
Giles shot Xander a glare over the top of his glasses.
"No," Máire corrected gently, "I mean my father is not the dead guy, Mr. Flannery. My father is the very much undead guy, Aine O'Leaghaire. You know him as Angelus."
Willow's hand shot up again. "Oh, but so how can you be Angel's daughter when you're only 25 or so and he's been dead for 245 years?"
"I was born in 1754 in Glasgow. My mother returned to Scotland when her fiancé vanished. Shortly after she left, she found out she was pregnant. When I was born, she named me Máire. It means "bitter". She gave me the last name Kinsella. I don't know why she chose that name, but it means "vile cheiftain".
"So I'm guessing she had a lot of pent up frustrations!" Xander mused. Everyone except Máire glared at him. "What?"
"When I was 25, my mother told me the truth about my father and the circumstances of my birth. She never got over the pain of being abandoned by the man she loved. After she told me the story, she made me promise that I would find him and make him know the pain she felt. Then she performed a ritual to ensure that I became immortal, so that I couldn't die until I found him, and I was sent out into the world to find Aine O'Leaghaire, and destroy his spirit for destroying my mother. By this time, my mother had heard stories of a horrible man who slaughtered entire villages in County Galway. I think now that she knew it was him but she never told me. She told me that he was probably in France or somewhere else in Europe.
At first I didn't know what to do - I always wanted to find my father, and now I was told that he was the very devil. My mother told me that I had to leave her village and never return, and that she would do the same. The next morning, before I woke up, she and my grandfather had fled. I tried to find them, but I didn't know where they had gone. Then, two days later, a farmer found their bodies in the loch. I knew that Angelus had killed them, and I knew that I had to do what my mother asked. My advantage was that he didn't know I existed.
I followed his trail through England, France, Austria, Italy, and most of eastern Europe. It was a very unpleasant task. Soon I began to realize that I was chasing a ghost, or a demon, since his murderous rampage went on for much more than a human lifetime. Then, about one hundred years ago, the trail got cold."
"That must have been when Angel was cursed." said Willow. She looked at Máire, and offered helpfully, "he was good for a while, but then he and Buffy~ well, he turned bad again."
"I tracked him down to Sunnydale. Last night I was waiting in the cemetary for him to arrive when a vampire attacked me. I was startled, and I screamed. Then I took care of him."
"What did you do to him?" Buffy asked, "I didn't see a stake."
"I-- I stabbed him with my pencil." said Máire.
"Resourceful much!" said Buffy
"Disgusting much!" said Cordelia, dropping her HB on the table.
"So when Angel attacked us outside my house, what did you say to him?" asked Buffy.
"I said ?Tá áthas orm bualadh leat, athair'. It's Celtic. It means ?It's nice to meet you, father'. I'm not sure that he understood. Then he told me I was protected, and he left."
"This is very interesting," interrupted Giles, "I've read about the possibility that some vampires could never turn against their own clan or sect, and Angel did kill his own family, but I've never heard of a vampire being confronted with his or her own offspring."
"I talked to Giles about this earlier," said Máire, nodding towards the office. "I know about the history between you and Angelus, and what happened to him. My mother wanted me to find Angelus and break him. In order to do that I need to make him feel anguish for what he did. I don't know how I can do that when he is a vampire, but my mother taught me a curse to put on him on her behalf when I found him."
Buffy looked at Máire carefully. "Angel killed Ms. Calendar and other people that I cared about. I'm not sure that I can just forgive and forget, much as I would like to have him back the way he was before. Even if I did, I'm not sure I want you killing him."
Máire looked at Buffy sadly. "I have been alive for over 200 years. It gets pretty boring to live that long after the first couple of lifetimes. Plus, it's very difficult to come up with new ways to die to be able to move on in life without having your friends or lovers wondering where you are. I've even tried to really die on occasion when I thought there was no point to my search. Do you see this scar around my neck?" Máire gestured to a think scar that seemed to run all the way across her throat. "I tried to be guillotined during the French Revolution. But unlike Angelus, being beheaded doesn't kill me. The only thing that will give me peace is destroying him."
Giles cleared his throat, and looked at Máire. "Well, we have a bit of a quandry, here, since none of us knows how to make Angelus feel again so that you can hurt him."
Buffy looked up at Giles. "Angel told me that when he was cursed by the gypsies, he felt anguish for every life he'd ever taken. He was so overwhelmed by the guilt, that he couldn't bring himself to even think about killing another person again. Wouldn't that mean that he would feel remorse for killing Máire's mother and grandfather as well?"
Giles looked at Buffy and her pals. "Well, er, yes, one would expect that would be the case. But that doesn't explain how Máire here would still be alive if her one purpose in being immortal had already been fulfilled."
Willow cleared her throat. No one looked her way. She tried again, this time a little louder. "What about when Buffy was having the portents about the Sadie Hawkins Dance?"
Cordelia looked at Willow with her usual disdain. "Gee, Will, I don't think a dance is really what's called for now!" Willow ignored Cordelia's reaction and turned to Buffy and Giles. "Remember how Angel was taken over by the spirit of the dead teacher? What if we could find a way to make him temporarily not an insane murderous undead creature of the night and instead turn him into an OK guy. Then Máire could introduce herself and he could know who she was and that may be enough to release her from the spell!"
"Well, its a possibility, but I would need to research it further before I could be sure." Giles turned and walked towards the stacks.
Buffy and Willow watched him go. Then Willow flipped on the power on her computer and began surfing the net. "Whatcha lookin' for, Wil?" Xander asked.
"Oh, you know, the black arts, witchcraft, possession, the usual!" Willow smiled.
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