The pub was noisy and crowded. It was noisy and crowded every night, but tonight it was even more so than usual. It seemed most of the town had turned up to celebrate the inkeeperess's birthday.
Angelus studied the scene with some confusion. He felt disoriented and out of place. It was like he'd only just arrived, from - somewhere else, where? He ran a hand through his hair, which was longish, and held in a loose ponytail by some sort of clip.
He tugged a bit bemusedly at the tail. Shouldn't his hair be a lot shorter?
He shook his head. *Don't be stupid, Angelus! What are you - an Englishman? Yech.*
He had the rather disorienting feeling that he'd been somewhere, been away for many, many years, and returned to a place that should no longer exist.
Angelus shook his head to clear out the considerable cobwebs. He'd obviously had far too much ale, not that that was cause for comment.
"Y'know, Angelus, old pal, I do believe that that lovely colleen over there's givin' ye the eye!"
Sean jostled his arm enthusiastically, spilling most of Angelus's ale over the table, and a fair proportion of his own.
Women! Angelus eagerly turned his head to where his friend was pointing. A beautiful woman could _always_ take Angelus' mind off his worries.
He blinked. The disorientation of a few seconds ago was wearing off fast, but he was still seeing double. Oh well - that was a familiar enough phenomenon.
"Which one?" he grinned. "I see two lovely, edible blondes, each talkin' to a different Mrs McGinley!"
Sean laughed uproariously. "There's only one blonde, ye drunk bugger! Ah - if only there _were_ two of her!"
Angelus rubbed at his eyes and studied her a bit more carefully. She was wearing a pristine white dress, and she appeared far too upper-class to be seen in a common inn. She seemed to sense him watching her. He would swear she glanced at him, just briefly, and smiled.
Liam leaned across the table, gesturing conspirationally at his two friends. "I've seen that missie around here before," he said wisely. "She and Mrs McGinley seem to get on very well." He suddenly turned on his famous cheeky grin. "And I swear I've heard 'em mention your name, Angelus, on at least two separate occasions! That crafty inkeeperess is on very close terms wi' yer ma, Angelus - I think they're plottin' te marry ye off!"
"Told ye," Sean said smugly, then fell off his chair. Angelus and Liam burst into laughter. Sean struggled up, looking embarrassed.
"You two have been drinking far too much! Again! Ye'd think ye could manage to remain just a little bit sober, for yer favourite landlady's birthday."
Angelus turned at the sound of Mrs McGinley's voice. He glanced around, but the blonde girl seemed to have disappeared.
He tried to shake off a growing sense of deja vu. Hadn't all of this already happened, a long time ago?
Sean shook his finger at Liam and Angelus. "Ye bastards! Drunk on the lovely lady's birthday!"
Liam snickered as Mrs McGinley reached down and hauled Sean up by the scruff of the neck, snagging Angelus on the way. "Not that I mind ye spending all yer money here, ye understand," she huffed, "but I run a respectable inn, and I'm not having the two o' ye gettin' completely plastered and startin' a-NOTHER brawl. Yes, you, Angelus o'Reilly - ye know exactly what I'm talking about! Out!" She pushed the two protesting men through the door of the common room and into the hallway.
Once there, the landlady let go of their necks and gave them each a shove towards the outside door. "Out ye get. Yer both a sad disappointment to yer dear sweet mothers, I'll wager." "Aw, come on, Margaret! We ain't that drunk." Sean made a sad face at her, but he was obviously a lot drunker than he realised, or he would never have risked calling her Margaret. Her lips pursed up.
"Ye can hardly walk straight, ye young ruffian!"
"Can so!" Sean proceeded to demonstrate, drawing himself up as tall as he could and marching forward. He stumbled on the first step, staggering into Margaret, who stepped out of the way and let him fall on his face. Angelus caught him before he could, all the while shaking with laughter.
Margaret McGinley was not impressed at all. "Fergus! Tiernan!" she bellowed.
Two beefy bouncers appeared out of the walls at her call. "Get 'em out!" she snapped.
The two moved to obey, grabbing the two inebriates and easily pushing them out of the inn. Angelus and Sean stumbled along laughingly, making token protest and lewd comments all the way.
They stumbled out into the cobbled street, where, after a short exchange involving the silverware Angelus's father would assuredly never miss, Sean collapsed.
Angelus watched him fall. "Or why don't ye rest right here?" he suggested, far too tipsy to care if his friend was the victim of horse-and-carriage road rage.
He thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head - only to see the blonde girl from the pub standing not five hundred metres away, smiling slightly. She saw that he had seen her, and turned away into the shadows.
It was a bad alley she was entering - if she was going to traverse such a seedy part of the town, she'd need a trustworthy escort like himself, right? Absolutely. Well, that was certainly more excuse than he usually needed to approach such a pretty woman. He followed her.
* * *
The next morning, Angelus awoke with the dawn.
Or rather, the dawn woke him. The sunlight got into his eyes and pounded on his alcohol-fogged head. He was lying on something cold, hard, and none too smooth. Where was he? He struggled groggily into a sitting position. A quick survey of the area revealed it to be the alleyway that the young lady had been entering last night.
He didn't remember anything that had transpired, but he had a bad feeling. A confused bad feeling. Angelus wiggled his hand around in a patch of sunlight, admiring the dappled patterns it made. Why did he feel like he hadn't seen the sun in years? Why did those patches of white light seem so important, so... beautiful? Especially on the morning after a pub crawl. The sunlight was very important, and he was sitting in it, so everything was all right.
His own thoughts made absolutely no sense to him. He staggered out of the alley, holding his poor, hungover head. There was Sean, lying in exactly the same place Angelus had left him, in a drunken heap.
Out of nowhere a vision came to him: overlaid on the scene before him was the sight of Sean, still lying on the ground, but stretched out on his back in a pool of blood. His limbs were twisted into unnatural positions, and his face was probably distorted with agony... but it was difficult to tell, since most of it was gone. His eyes had been pulled out and placed in his palms.
Angelus screamed and covered his eyes. It was almost a minute before he had the courage to uncover them again, but when he did the bloody vision was gone, and there was nothing there but Sean, who was now stirring and moaning miserably.
"Sean!!" Angelus ran over to help his friend up, momentarily forgetting his own not inconsiderable hangover. "Are ye all right?"
"Of course I'm not!" Sean used him as a ladder, climbing up his arm and not letting go once he was standing. "I feel like ten different kinds of hammer are bangin' away inside my skull... How much did I drink last night?"
"I think I lost the ability to count not long after you did," Angelus observed dryly. "But ye look bloody awful."
"Me?! You look like a walking corpse!"
Angelus felt his blood run cold. Walking corpse - why did that thought put such a fright into him? It was only an expression.
Sean had noticed his face drain of all it's color. "Angelus? What's the matter?"
Angelus shook his head, and abruptly wished he had not. "It's nothing," he winced. "Come on, let's get into the pub, mebbe dear Margaret will let us have a hair of the dog that bit us..."
* * *
"Ye bloody great morons! I bet yer poor mothers are going frantic! Collapsing in the alleyway, indeed. Idiots." Margaret shoved them both hard into chairs in the now empty common room, and stomped off into the kitchen. Angelus winced at her stomps. Was she wearing lead-soled boots?
"Oh, no! Me mother!"
Sean glanced over at him. "She'll know where ye are, Angie boy," he said dryly. "Same place ye are every night!"
"I promised her I'd be home early, to take me brothers and little sister to our aunt in the next town. I bloody well promised. She'll have had to take the carriage out herself, and she's been so tired lately. Agh! I'm such a cretin."
"That ye are!" Margaret returned, holding two glasses of water, which she plonked down in front of her guests. "Drink up!"
Tired, hungover, and caught up in a fit of self-reproof, Angelus tossed it back unthinkingly.
"Arrrgghghhhhh!" He choked most of it back into the glass. "What the bloody hell is that stuff?"
"It's salted water." Margaret folded him arms and glared at the two young men. "Drink! Both of you!"
* * *
Angelus ran his tongue around his mouth. Salted water. Sadistic woman.
"Angelus!"
"Mother?"
"Ye stupid boy! I was worried sick about ye!"
Sean winced. He quickly ducked out of the common room, pausing only long enough to doff his hat and smile at his friend's mother, and make a typically Seanish remark about having to powder his nose.
Angelus squirmed a bit. "What are ye doin' here, Mother? Shouldn't ye be at Aunt Nuala's with the kids? I'm really sorry about that. I am paying the price."
She gave him a sharp smack over the head, just to ensure that he did indeed pay the price, and sat down beside him. "I telephoned her to let her - and Cailin - know we couldn't make it. We were worried, Angel."
"Ye shoulda known he'd be hungover somewhere," said an amused voice from the vicinity of the doorway.
Angelus blinked, registering for the first time the presence of his two younger brothers and younger sister. The amused voice belonged to his seventeen year old brother, Diarmid. The others were Arlen, thirteen, and Caragh, who was ten.
"I'm sorry, Ma," he said plaintively, putting on the pathetic face he always used when he wanted her to forgive him. "I know what a lousy son I am... wait, what did ye just say?"
Mairead o'Reilly had never been able to stop herself from melting at her oldest son's Sad Face, even though she knew he only used it because it hit her right on the affectionate mother button. Angelus could see it working now, but something else had caught his attention.
"I said, it was a given ye'd be blind," Diarmid repeated. "Is yer hearing going in yer old age, big brother?"
Normally Angelus would have smirked and joined in with banter of his own, but... he was getting a disturbing feeling in his gut. Something was wrong.
"I meant Mother," he said.
Mairead looked a bit surprised. "I said, I telephoned yer aunt to let her know that we wouldn't be joining her and yer other sister... what's the matter, love?"
Angelus frowned at the tabletop. "I don't know." Something was bothering him about her last statement. What was it?
Caragh hopped over and jumped into his lap. "Is it because ye know what ye're gonna get from Aunt Nuala for messing with her schedules?" She smiled. "You're in big trouble, Angel!"
He automatically pulled her closer, absently stroking her hair. "No. Something terrible..."
Indignant, Caragh squirmed away. "Don't mess up my hair!"
He winced. "Sorry, Cordelia. And would you mind not talking so loud?"
Angelus suddenly became aware that everyone was staring at him. "What?"
"What's that funny accent you just did?" asked Arlen. "Can you do it again?"
"And I'm CARAGH," The ten year old quite deliberately yelled in his ear. "That's CARAGH!!!"
"All right!" He allowed her to slide to the floor. "Did I call you something else?"
She fussed with her ringlets. "Cordelia. Which is a silly name."
Cordelia... Angelus slouched in his chair, pulling fitfully at a splinter of wood on the table. He knew a Cordelia, from somewhere. Where?
"Buffy," he muttered.
His mother regarded him disapprovingly, but his brothers both sniggered. "That's who ye were with last night, was it?" Diarmid was grinning. "Ah, Angelus, ye're me role model!"
"Yes! Yes, it was! I mean... no, it wasn't. I mean... I don't know what I mean!"
He remembered... what did he remember? Buffy... Buffy... Buffy! That name was important! Who was she?
Blonde hair. She was blonde... not the same blonde as that young woman from last night, but... Somehow, he envisaged the two of them as polar opposites. That's right. They hated each other.
His thoughts were still making no sense. Who's Buffy, damnit?! If he could figure that out, everything would make sense.
He was getting flashes. A blonde girl - Buffy - smiling at him - hugging him - crying on his shoulder. He was overcome by an indescribable feeling of tenderness - did he love this girl? That was a trap he'd sworn he'd never fall into. He shuddered suddenly. Buffy... Summers? The Vampire Slayer. A girl he couldn't love, because... because he was a vampire?
Oh, shit! It was all flooding back. Darla. One hundred and fifty years spent causing nothing but pain. The gypsies... and then a long period where he did nothing but wallow in his guilt and occasionally drain stray animals. Then, an eccentric demon who worked for good and called himself Whistler. And Buffy...
Oh, no.
His soul had been taken from him. He remembered that now, though he hadn't when he was first restored. He'd had a certain suspicion - why else would Buffy be standing over him with a sword, and in a place he'd never seen before? - but he'd refused to entertain it.
And then... then she'd rammed it through his stomach, sending him flying into a vortex that led... to here? Where was here?
Angel finally looked up, regarding the four other occupants of the room. "Who are you?" he croaked.
"Mairead" assumed a look of surprised concern. "We're ye're family, Angel love!"
"No!" Angel stood, and started to back away. "No, they're all dead! Who are you? Where am I?"
Caragh stepped towards him. In that one movement, she changed.
She held out her hand to him. Angel recoiled.
Angel looked at the grinning creature that wore his sister's face. No longer the beautiful, innocent ten year old he'd grown up with, she was drenched in her own blood, and most of her hair had burned off. Her head hung at a sickening angle.
"Where do you think, brother dear?"
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