A/N: The introduction of a new character will make S2 (and the following seasons) slightly AU. Some episodes (ones crucial to the plot) will be rewritten to accomodate her, so therefore the chapter titles will be the same as the episode titles. For the other episodes, you can assume she was in there somewhere. The rest of this story will be original episodes (think of it as off-screen cases Angel Investigations took on).
Chapter One: Cryptic Girl
"Sorry, sis, but you're gonna have to try much harder than that if you even wanna stand a chance of takin' me down." The face that was my own smiled sweetly down at me. It was like looking into a mirror, only with deliberate mistakes. Her eyes were a crystal-clear blue and her honey-blonde hair fanned out from behind her like sunlight. My own chestnut eyes held sorrow and grief, and my so-brown-it's-almost-black hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. Here we were, in a fight to the death. Whereas I actually looked the part, Celia looked like an angel. She was anything but. I wanted to punch her out right then and there, just for looking so immaculate. She grinned that stupid grin again, and I resisted the urge to very violently wipe that condescending smirk off her face. I have anger issues, I know. But she just has this way of getting to me. After all, she is my twin.
"You're cheating," I replied, wincing inwardly at my whining tone. "A magickal boost for your strength and speed? Not fair."
"What can I say, sis?" She asked, easily blocking my roundhouse. "You were always the stronger one, I admit that. The only way I could match you would be to resort to magick."
"Last ditch attempt, huh?" Magick was a sacred thing in our household. A friend of our mother's, a wicked-powerful witch, had died a few years ago, and Mom since then had told us to honour magick and use it responsibly. Willow had taught us that already, though. She'd taught us a lot and treated us like her own daughters. Seeing my own sister flaunting her unjustly-claimed power so boastfully pissed me the hell off.
"Come on, Kat. You know you would have done the same thing if you'd had time." Punch.
Into the wall I sailed. Through the wall I sailed. I coughed as small particles of concrete and brick settled around me like dust. I groaned. A right place for us to fight, in the basement of our house. We'd be lucky if the place didn't collapse on us, with the rate we were going.
"Never." I did a little flip to get back on my feet. Despite the bruises that pained my body, and the cuts that stung so fiercely, I wouldn't give up. I couldn't. It wasn't in my blood.
"Righteous till the end. ...This isn't one of those stupid Apocalypse stories Will used to tell us, you know." She laughed at the thought. A sound that once mimicked my own now held only cruelty and promises of pain, and it chilled me to the bone. "He's not gonna come blastin' in, ready to save the day. Mom isn't gonna be chargin' in, Mr. Pointy a-raised," she added pointedly, a hint of a grin caressing her lips.
She's just trying to get a rise out of you. Don't do something stupid, don't do something stupid, don't do-
But how could I not? She had murdered our mother, murdered the closest thing we'd had to a father, all in cold blood. All so that nothing could stand in her way. And now she would kill me. So of course I did something stupid.
It was as if I was looking at someone else, not myself. I would groan in frustration as the someone else recklessly launched her beaten body at a nearly-unbeatable foe. I would scream in anger as I would see the someone else being staked in the stomach with her mother's old stake. I would cover my eyes in fear, just so I wouldn't see the someone else being tossed across the room and into the concrete wall like a ragdoll.
But I wasn't looking in. I was living it. Which made it a hell of a lot harder to scream, considering I had trouble getting my lungs to work. The blood flowed freely from the nice big hole in my gut, and it hurt so much. The pain was nothing I'd ever felt before. It was a searing, blinding, agonizing, white-hot feeling that threatened to drag me down into the darkness.
"And she just leapt off the top of the tower, graceful and brave to the end. By sacrificing herself, she saved the whole world."
Mom had walked in on Will's little story, and she had been really pissed off at him. We never talked much about her past, and only knew the part about her being the Slayer because William had convinced her that it was to dangerous for us not to know about the darkness that lurked out there, too dangerous for us not to have control over our abilities.
Point was, Mom was brave enough to sacrifice herself when the time had come. But now wasn't my time. I had to be brave enough to move beyond the pain and overcome the darkness that threatened to engulf me. Lazily, I rose, in time to see Celia drawing a doorway on one of the two remaining walls in chalk.
She hadn't noticed that I was back in the game. She was muttering something under her breath, and the chalk outline shimmered until it became a real one. The door opened of its own accord, and I could see nothing but silvery grey on the other side. Fierce winds issued from the other side of the doorway, swirling concrete and dust around me, making it even harder for me to breathe.
"Things are going to be the way they should have," Celia said resolutely, striding purposefully through the doorway. She disappeared into the silvery-ness of time and space, and I struggled to go after her. On my hands and knees I crawled, too preoccupied with following her to register what she had said. I coughed up some blood, pain shooting through my body. A merciful gust of ethereal wind pulled me the final couple of feet into the portal, allowing to succumb to the darkness.
22 Years Earlier...
"What's that? Two nests in three nights?" Angel sheathed his sword.
"Somethin' big must be goin' down," Gunn agreed, reloading his crossbow, just in case. "Wolfram and Hart, maybe?"
"What else?" Angel asked wearily. "For a bunch of evil lawyers, you'd think-" He stopped speaking, glancing into the thick of a few trees.
"What's up? More vamps?" Gunn raised his crossbow, pointing it in the direction that Angel was staring. "Angel? C'mon, what is it? Demons, vampires...Angel?"
But Angel ignored his words, slowly making his way to the trees. If he didn't know better...
Impossible, he silently chided himself. She's in Sunnydale, you would have known if she was coming to L.A... But even as he spoke inside his mind, he began to contradict himself. He could think of more than one occasion where Buffy had showed up without warning.
"Oh God," he murmured, the sight of a limp female form visible to him through the darkness. The scent of her blood was overpowering, and he raced to the scene, her faint heartbeat thudded quietly in his ears. "Buffy!"
Gunn muttered the name quietly to himself. He had heard that name before, somewhere. Something Cordelia had told him... "Wait, the Slayer?" He asked, as it clicked into place. "Yo, Angel! Wait!"
"Buffy, oh God," he choked out, nearing the still form. But as he knelt down on the cold earth, he could sense that something was off. The girl -he could see now that it was not Buffy; she was taller than the Slayer, for one- was severely injured, with a stake sticking out of her stomach. That in itself was odd, as the stake looked fairly familiar to him. No, what struck him the most was the fact that she smelled of Buffy -and yet she wasn't. There was also a hidden undercurrent in her blood, a scent that was familiar, one that he knew all too well.
"That the Slayer?" Gunn asked, arriving beside him.
"No."
"Then who is she?"
"Dunno."
"She's hurt."
"Yeah."
"She breathin'?"
"Yeah."
"Hospital?"
"No." Gunn raised an eyebrow. This was not the first time they had come across an injured person, but it was the first time that Angel had opted against the hospital.
"Cordy's place?"
"Let's go." Angel scooped the unconscious girl into his arms, walking as quickly as he dared back to his car. The sooner they got to Cordelia's, the sooner they could revive this girl, and the sooner he could get some answers.
"God, it took you long enough," Cordelia groused as she unlocked her door. "What was it, another nest? Oh, and did you kill the Trelbane demon? Of course you killed it, what am I saying? I have a vision, you do the hero thing. It's a given-"
"Cordy," Angel cut in sharply, silencing her with one look.
"What happened?" The still form in Angel's arms made her voice come out in a choked whisper. The way her head rested lifelessly on his chest, how her legs hung limply over his arms. Then she spied the stake. "Who is she? What happened to her?"
"We're oh for two," Gunn supplied, as Angel carefully laid the girl on Cordelia's bed.
"Angel, you're back?" Wesley asked walking into the bedroom. "How did the demon hunt go? I trust- Dear God, what happened?"
"Good question. Wish I knew."
"Well, where did you find her?"
"The park. I smelled her blood. ...I thought..." Angel trailed off, looking at the girl forlornly. "Wes..."
"Bandages," he nodded. "Be right back."
"Her clothes are all...wait outside," Cordelia commanded. "Let me change them."
Angel and Gunn obediently trooped into the hall. Wesley passed Cordelia the first-aid supplied before she shut the door, and she went to work tending to the girl. The black jeans were pretty much a lost cause, but her wine-coloured tank top looked salvageable. Miraculously, her leather jacket had escaped whatever fight she'd been in unscathed.
Cordelia took her time, removing the stake as painlessly as she could, and took it as a good sign when the girl stirred as she applied the antiseptic. She carefully bandaged the wound, and thought the girl looked much better once she'd pulled her old Sunnydale High sweatshirt over her head and slipped her into a pair of red sweats.
"She had a bunch of other cuts and bruises," Cordelia reported as the men entered. "But they're pretty far-gone, healing-wise, so the only thing worrying me is that stake wound-"
"What's this?"
She turned to see Angel holding up two silver chains. One had an ancient-looking silver cross on it, and the other held an elaborate, pretty silver ring.
"Found 'em on her. I had to take them off because they kept getting tangled in her hair. ...Angel?"
But the vampire was in his own little world. The more he learned about the girl, the more confused he became.
"...So what do you think, Angel?"
"What? Huh?"
"I said," Wesley replied patiently, "perhaps we should check her clothing to see if she has some sort of ID on her. At least then we know who she is."
"Oh. Right. Good idea."
"Let's see," Cordelia began, picking up the leather jacket. Had Angel been more focused on what she was doing, he might have noticed yet another piece of the puzzle. She searched all the pockets, and let out a small yelp of triumph when she fished out a small black wallet. "Catch," she called, tossing Angel the wallet. He caught it, and began to look through it.
The photos caught his eye first. There were nine or ten of them. Most were of two girls, twins; one brunette, one blonde. There they were as toothy two-year-olds, smiling innocently for the camera, strapped in their high chairs, their hair tied back in identical ponytails. As four-year-olds, they clutched each other's hand, decked out in sporty sneakers, baseball caps and backpacks, ready for their first day of kindergarten. A few more pictures of them as children, playing and laughing together.
One was by far the best, however, and was easily his favourite. It looked to be taken recently, and showed both girls as teenagers. With boyfriends. The blonde was practically sitting in the lap of a sandy-haired boy, her arms around his neck. She gazed seductively at the camera, and her boyfriend had an all-confident smirk on his face. The brunette -the girl in Cordy's bed- looked far less sultry, but beautiful just the same.
There she was, leaning against a dark-haired boy, her face in an everlasting expression of laughter. The boy had his arms wrapped around her, tickling her relentlessly. While she grinned into the camera, he gazed at her, however, adoration evident in his dark eyes. Angel could see the faint outline of two silver chains on her neck.
"Angel, find anything interesting?"
He allowed a small smile to play at the corners of his mouth, before moving onto the next picture. The friendly redhead smiled up at him, her arm around the brunette, and likewise. They were laughing together, having fun. The redhead looked much older than Angel remembered, and the pieces of the puzzle began to slowly click into place.
Flipping it, he found another familiar -though less liked- face. The bleached-blond spiky hair had been traded for a common sandy-blond straight cut, and his clothes were no longer a mimic of Angel's. The babies in his arms looked to be no older than a few months old, and he was smiling lovingly at the girls.
If his heart was beating, it would have stopped there. He supposed he should have seen it coming. But the sight of her lovely face, smiling adoringly up at him, her head tilted at a slight angle, took his breath away. Her golden hair fanned out from behind her like liquid sunshine, and the two little girls seated on her lap were her only world.
"Angel? Yoo hoo, anyone home?"
He thought that, that picture was the last. He almost missed the final one. It was so thin, he flipped it with the one of her, intent to tear his eyes from it. Had it not been for the goldish edging on the thin one, he would not have distinguished the two apart. However prepared he may have been for the last one, he certainly wasn't prepared for this picture.
"Angel? What's with the silent treatment? Hey, is that-?" Cordy came to peer over his shoulder, which was no easy task, as he was much taller than she was and she had to stand on tiptoes, even in heeled slippers. Angel silenced her with a glare and pocketed the wallet, striding out of the bedroom.
"She wakes up, lemme know." They could all hear the front door slam as he let himself out of the apartment.
"What's his problem?" Gunn scoffed. Cordy just shook her head and glanced at the still-unconscious teenager. For the moment, she held more questions than answers, and Cordy, for one, would be overjoyed when she awoke.
Once Angel was in outside Cordy's place, he took in a deep breath of air. Though he had long since rid himself of that pesky habit, it made him feel better. He'd never thought he was claustrophobic, but looking at that picture, Cordelia's bedroom suddenly seemed much more smaller, as if all the walls were closing in on him.
Angel flipped open the wallet once more, and his fingers found a small, white plastic rectangle. Katherine Summers, read the loopy, feminine writing on the library card. Well, that just confirmed his theory. Once again, he slid the wallet into his pocket.
He still had a few hours till sunrise. Figuring he'd feel better after he killed something, he silently slipped into the shadows, the cut-out picture of him and Buffy dancing at her senior prom two years ago still blindingly vivid in his mind.
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