Angel was back in his office. Brooding. He had finally convinced Wesley to go home, and promised to pick up the phone if it rang again during the night. Not that it would. He wasn’t exactly precognitive, but his intuition about the darker half of the world was rarely wrong, and it told him that there would be no more demonic activity the rest of that night. The battle hadn’t taken long, and it wasn’t yet four o’clock in the morning.
Angel Investigations’ finance book lay open on Angel’s desk. He paid it no attention. For all that Cordelia kept announcing that they were broke, each day the hotel remained their property, with coffee in the pot and pig’s blood in the fridge, and each two week period checks went out to Wes, Cordy, and Gunn...must remember to add Fred to that list now that she was on the verge of being a functional member of the team.
He turned his chair to the window and flung it wide open, letting in the night.
What did happen after death? To people, not to demons with consciences...or to people like Lorne, who happened to have weird features but were as precious and unique as people themselves. What did the future hold for him?
Angel had a long-standing agreement with each of his closest friends for them to kill him if he turned evil. His alter ego Angelus was dangerous, and the slim hope of redeeming one vampire wasn’t worth losing many innocent human beings. If he had only to be strong and fight every day, as Buffy had told him once so long ago, he could walk that road, if only for a chance that his life on this world would be something more than the life of a monster. Cordelia constantly told him that the good in him now outweighed the bad. She didn’t really know what she was talking about, and yet he still found it comforting. So long as he remained his current self.
The thing that the others didn’t get was that Angelus wasn’t a separate person. With his soul, Angel had the ability to look outside of himself. Care about others, and care about the effects that he had on them, think of them as more important than himself, and usually...fight against it...but usually intensely dislike himself as a result of the whole process. Without the soul, the entire process was reversed--without the soul, Angelus only cared about himself and acted regardless of the consequences--but everything else about him was the same. Angelus was the thing Angel was every time he stopped caring about the way his presence affected the world. The actions, the intentions, the volitions...they were all his. The guilt was all his. And the journey back seemed so long sometimes that he wished he had never been born to start it.
He had always thought that, if he died a hero and achieved redemption the way Doyle had--or, more probably, lost his grip on his humanity and died at the hands of one of his friends--either way, the journey would be over. If something good awaited him after death, it would be a pleasant surprise; if another eternity of torment turned him into something less than an animal awaited, he would be able to deal, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. But now there was a third possibility: that he would have to start the journey all over again. Buffy had. Not that she had a long dark past to atone for...he had never met someone so completely good...but she did the same type of thing he did. Saving innocents. Fighting, using that fight to constantly give to the others around her who would never know.
Was that fight wearing down the humans around him? Wesley, who had hardened with each physical battle he had won? Cordelia, who made more of a dramatic show of being hurt each time she had a vision? Was it wearing on him?
He had told Buffy once that when he had thoughts and questions like these, the only person he could share them with was himself.
Brooding.
That didn’t make things any better, for him or for anyone else.
The phone rang.
Angel picked it up halfway through the second ring. “Cordelia, we took care of the vampires, did you see anything else? Are you all right?”
A tiny voice answered. There was the soft static that meant a long distance phone call, and a tentative, “Hello?”
“Buffy?”
“Angel, I’m so sorry to call now in the middle of the night.”
“This is the middle of my day. What’s wrong?”
“Willow’s gone.”
“You’re sure?”
“I had this dream, and I thought it was one of those normal...sleeping hasn’t been easy since...but anyway, I wondered if it was a prophecy instead, and I decided to go downstairs and write it down.” The tremble in her voice was heartbreaking, but she went on without a pause. “Willow and Tara’s door was wide open, and I know it was closed when I went to bed--I was steering Dawn around there--but it was flung wide open, and only Tara was in the bed, curled around nothing. I didn’t wake her or anything, but she woke up the instant I was there, and she was calling for Willow. There’s all this magic stuff gone. I think Willow took my car...I mean, I said she always could...but Tara thinks she’s going to do something she shouldn’t.”
“I can’t see Willow going to start a barfight at the Bronze in the middle of the night.”
“It closes at two. Sunnydale, remember? Big on the vamp action, not a lot of town?”
There was a noise on the other end of the line, as if someone was tugging for another‘s attention.
“Angel?” Buffy said. “Tara wants to talk to you.”
There was another voice on the end of the line. Softer, a little deeper, a voice that would have held intense warmth in another time and place. “Hi. I’m Tara. I do spells and stuff with Willow. I th--think I know what she’s planning to do this time. She took all the same stuff that we used to resurrect Buffy, even the rest of the fawn’s blood.“
Angel‘s head was spinning with the new information, but Tara‘s implication had been clear. “You’re saying she’s going to resurrect someone else?”
Buffy’s voice again. “Willow’s all proud of the spell, Angel, she still doesn’t know...she and Giles had this big blowup this afternoon that they thought I didn’t hear. He told her this afternoon that she was just lucky, touching those forces and coming back from it. I think she wants to prove she can do it again.”
Angel swore. Cordelia didn’t know the back-to-life spell was bad news, and Cordelia had someone she really wanted to resurrect—and the part of Angel that didn’t care about others’ feelings desperately hoped that she would go through with it before he could stop her.
“What?”
“Willow is on her way here to L.A.”
“Then we’re on our way there. No...Angel, Giles’ car has been in the shop for the last week and Willow took mine. I hate this!”
“I’m on my way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, wake Giles, get him over there. Is Xander coming?”
“I think he and Anya better stay with Dawn, but I’ll call him. I don’t really want to leave Dawn with Spike when I can help it.”
“Spike???”
“Long story. You’re really coming?”
“Yeah. And I’ll see if I can intercept Willow on my way.”
They hung up.
Angel pulled up to Revillo Drive just before sunrise. He assisted the tall, blonde girl who must be Tara into the front passenger seat, then moved to help Buffy get in the back. She shoved him in first, and just in time, as the first ray of the sun hit his arm in passing and produced a cloud of smoke.
She giggled. Great.
Giles efficiently closed all four windows and slid into the driver’s seat. Without even a chance to speak, they were on their way.
Although Buffy looked even more worn out than lack of sleep could account for. “You okay?” Angel whispered.
“Job stuff. It’s been a long day. I’m too dumb for college, too strong for construction, too bored for retail. So I got drunk. With Spike. Then I watched him cheat at kitten poker and I fell down trying to kill a demon that ambushed me outside my house.”
“You? Drunk? Spike?” That was the second time she had mentioned the younger vampire, and Angel was beginning to be truly annoyed. With extreme difficulty--the numbness inside him still threatening to break and sometimes affecting his temper--Angel asked softly, “Did it help?”
“Drunk Buffy is very sick Buffy.”
“Oh.”
"Giles gave me a check to help with the bills. He insisted that it came out of the retroactive salary I bullied the Watcher's Council into giving him. It won't last for long, though, and I need a job soon."
"Makes sense. After we stop Willow from doing something incredibly stupid. You'll go home and be a..." he searched for a way to finish that sentence, vividly remembering Buffy's claim to a sealed destiny back during career week at Sunnydale High.
"Mmmhmmm."
He let her sleep.
