In Dreams

[Sock Monkey]

Part 11

The evening ticked on. Giles and Yoder continued to record the prophecy book and tried to ignore its smelly addendum. Xander made a sandwich. Thu Kheim grew bored and began entertaining herself by balancing Buffy's troll hammer upright with the end of its handle on the flat of her hand. Clem and Spike drifted over to the television and reminisced quietly about old times.

"This one's interesting," Michael commented, examining a withered yellow object from the purchases that Oz had unpacked on the coffee table.

"It's a goblin scrotum," said Gunn. "Used to boost invisibility spells. They're collected from the corpses before burial and preserved in fungus."

"I see," Michael nodded, setting the object down and wiping his hand on his pants.

Gunn chuckled. "That's the kind of trivia that stays with you when all the legal eagle info has faded away."

Little Jordy was seated on the rug with his chin and crossed arms resting on the coffee table's edge, his face back in its human form. He gazed at the new magical supplies with his customary silence. "Danny."

"Yeah, Jord?" Oz said absently.

"Can Willow use this stuff to find that Wesley guy?"

Heads raised; the adults looked at Jordy and at each other. Willow was a much more powerful mage than either Dilip or Giles. Her control was iffy, true, but over the years she had successfully tapped into sources of magic that most witches could only dream of.

"Maybe she could," Oz answered.

Jordy stared ahead thoughtfully. "Maybe she could make Illyria her own body, too, so she wouldn't have to keep borrowing Fred's."

"Hey, yeah, why not?" Gunn exclaimed. "She's got the mojo. Hell, she re-souled Angel twice and slayerized half the fuckin' planet...Dude, if anyone can give us a hand, it's her."

Giles rose up, alarmed. "Wait, now. It'd be best to think this through before asking Willow to perform any spells on your behalf. Wolfram and Hart is still a powerful and very evil organization; we can't just go charging into their territory at half-cock, even to find a former colleague. It could be suicidal -- and believe me when I say that we'd like nothing more than to know Wesley's true fate, for his family's sake as well as our own. His mother is heartbroken." He shook his head, and then his voice audibly stiffened. "As for dealing directly with your 'Illyria' creature -- that's entirely up to Willow."

"Aw, no, we wouldn't want you to get your fingers dirty helpin' us out," Gunn growled, his voice dripping sarcasm.

"It isn't that," Mr. Yoder said. "It's just that it makes sense to try to secure an area befo- "

He was interrupted by a WHUMP as Thu accidentally dropped the troll hammer and its massive weight broke three floorboards. She cringed sheepishly. "Oops."

Several pairs of Council and Sunnydale eyes went to the damaged floor, and then automatically went to Xander. "I know the drill," Xander sighed. "Where's your toolbox?"

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Buffy slipped from the house unnoticed, not much caring what was going on downstairs, and drove back to the motel room she shared with Willow. The room was dimly lit: the TV off and only the bathroom light burning. She found her friend sitting crosslegged in bed in her pajamas, eyes closed, covered from head to foot in a cloud of twinkling, dancing, glowing particles. "Are you beaming up or down?" Buffy asked her.

Willow cracked open one eye and smiled. "Just jogging in place." The particles swirled and settled and rose again. "I got the grand tour of the area today. It's not such a bad little hellmouth at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love."

"You're not quoting freely from A Charlie Brown Christmas again, are you?"

"It's still my secret vice," the witch murmured. Her body levitated a few inches above the covers. "They seem to have this hellmouth under control pretty well; no apocalypti or legions of demonic armies or fluffy yellow baby chicks with agenda and poison fangs..." She caught sight of her glittery reflection in the TV screen. "Hey, check it out. I'm a snow globe."

Buffy slumped down on her own bed, disconsolate. "Okay, I know my track record sucked before, but two dumpages within a twenty-four hour period is a new low."

Willow gave her an odd look. "Is there a reason that I need to know how many times you've pottied?"

"I'm talking about guys, Wil," Buffy sighed. "Guys who've made it clear that I'm no longer wanted in their undead, new-girlfriend-having lives. I've been thrown over for Lassie and Alberta Einstein. All that's missing now is for Riley Finn to parachute onto the roof to tell me again how fabulous Sam is."

The shiny particle cloud vanished. "Angel broke it off with you? Oh, no! Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him?"

"There wasn't much part of 'I loved Cordelia and now that she's dead I'm smoochin' a werewolf' to misunderstand."

Willow did a double-take. "Oz and Angel...?"

"No! Oz and- I mean Angel and- " Buffy's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "He found someone else."

Willow picked at the bedcovers for a minute before she spoke. "Well...not to split hairs or anything, but so did you. Morty's waiting for you back in Rome, remember?"

"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"Sorry. But I have trouble pronouncing Chef Boy-Ar-Dee's name correctly, let alone Don Julio Pizzaria What's-His-Face, and 'The Immortal' just sounds like something out of a comic book. ...Hey, whoa, Cordelia and Angel?"

"Who'd a' thunk, huh?" The concept was still impossible to process. God rest her soul, but...conceited, shallow, self-centered Cordelia? Cordelia who'd worn her Snotty Bitch title proudly? Cordelia the Queen of Mean? But he'd gotten all chummy with Faith, too, when Faith was horrible, Buffy remembered. Had Cordelia acted differently around him, or was there a side of Angel that was attracted to mean girls?

"He's changed, Willow. He was always quiet, but he was never...distant before. It was like his mind was a million miles away. Like he didn't care whether I approved of what he'd been doing or not. Oh, my god. He took up for Spike."

That, as much as anything else, wounded her ego. It also frightened her. The rivalry between Angel and Spike for her hand had been a constant for lo these many years; a thing that, in a sick sort of way, she had come to count on and be reassured by. As long as they fought, she knew she was wanted. That she was the center of their universe. That they would do whatever she asked. In a life where people were so fleeting and burdens so great, that kind of power was both heady and comforting. I've given so much. I've given UP so much. Don't I deserve it?

Couldn't count on anything now. In her absence all the relationships had shifted; all the players had changed sides.

No more dancing.

------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'll get with Willow first thing in the morning," Oz promised Gunn. "I think she'd be willing." To Giles he added, "We'll be careful."

"Please do," Giles said. He was forced to raise his voice somewhat over the hammer and woodsaw sounds of Xander patching the floor. "I can't guarantee you the full support of the council. We're here primarily to check on Miss Kheim, after all. Any additional casework will require clearance..."

"Bla bla bla bla bla," Thu Kheim mumbled under her breath.

A quick swear escaped Xander as his impaired depth perception caused him to misjudge his target and almost hammer his hand. Spike rolled his eyes. "No fear now that Bob The Builder's on the team."

Xander took some nails out of his mouth. "Hey, better that than Bob The Spirit Of Unwiped Bottoms Yet To Come." He grimaced in the direction of Old Bob. "Seriously, that guy puts the B.O. in 'Boo.' "

"Ro rhit, Rhaggy, to paraphrase one of American telly's higher intellectual children's programs," Spike snorted.

Xander jabbed a finger at him. "Okay, I'll give you that our cartoons are weird, but at least..." He pondered in desperation. "...At least our towns don't have goofy names like, like...'Doodleshire' and 'Strumpet-Upon-Twit.' "

Spike turned to Giles. "We have a town named after Faith and Monkey Boy?"

Giles said, "Shut up, both of you."

Yoder set the video camera down, rubbed a crick out of his neck, and murmured to the watcher, "We've still got Ms. Burkle to interview. Now that Spike's told us where the rest of the Old Ones are buried -- I couldn't get much out of Angel about that, by the way -- we can send a team out to seal it off. The well-keeper's cave might have some records about Illyria's species, too. Be worth having it searched."

Giles nodded agreement. "Far safer to do this in our own way," he said, his voice low and confidential. Angel's way, after all, was what had gotten Illyria released and Ms. Burkle killed in the first place. Too blind, too rash, too overly-confident. He didn't like the idea of Willow heading off in that direction.

"Don't throw candy corn through the ghost, Jordy," he heard Oz saying. "That's rude."

No, he didn't like the idea of Willow joining forces with Angel at all.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Login...password...

The Inbox page appeared, and Angel gazed down at the bright laptop screen and its list of e-mail letters. Past the Discount Viagra offer; past the invitation from the Nigerian princess to keep her twelve million sixty dollars safe in his bank account; down, down...

neenah at hotmail dot com.

He sat still and silent for a time, then slowly moved the cursor onto the letter and clicked it open..

Hi, Big Guy. Miss you. Love you.

See you soon.

Slowly, painstakingly, he began to type a reply.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Home again, Spike pressed his front door shut, and moved quietly across the bedroom. In the dark and the silence he shrugged out of his clothes. Cool air tingled the newly-bared skin and he paused a moment, motionless, to revel in the sensation.

When it passed, he lay down on the bed and slid underneath the blankets. He found Fred asleep there, curled on her side into a fetal ball, her small hands fisted and pressed against her face. Carefully, trying not to wake her, he spooned his body around hers and draped an arm over her protectively. The hand that could crush bricks with no effort gently covered her tense fists, easing them open, lacing his fingers between hers, soothing and stroking until finally her hands relaxed in his.

"I'll never hurt you, Pet," he whispered against her cheek as she slept. "I promise."

----------------------------------------------------------------

Tonight's dream was different from the previous ones: erratic, fragmented; lurching from scene to scene in an uncertain timeline. At one point she found her mother lying dead on the couch, and that was truly a nightmare even though it didn't look like Mama; Mom had straight black hair and was Cambodian, and now she was tall and white and curly sandy-blonde. And dead.

And a severed hand was crawling across a table, and Anya insisted on selling it, and bit by bit she felt a rage begin to grow within her that twisted her soul into ugly, shrieking knots...

Buffy got out of bed and groped her way to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Several miles away, Thu Kheim got out of bed and turned on a lamp and wrote the dream down.

[E.Marie]

Another wonderful chapter. I loved your nod to Cordelia/Angel and you had so truly funny lines. Like Willow thinking Buffy was talking about her bathroom movements and Spikes' line about a town named after Faith/Xander. Oh, and Willow thinking Buffy meant Oz/Angel.

While I know Buffy is having a hard time I still can't help wanting to smack her. For her thoughts about Cordelia and the boys moving on. I admire your efforts to not make all the Scoobies over the top evil since I have a very hard time writing them myself. Everyone feels in character here. Loved both Angel and Spikes' tenderness towards the women they care about.
_________________
Angel to Cordelia: My track record with the whole man/woman thing isn't, you know... I don't wanna use the words 'tragic farce' but…"

[Sock Monkey]

Thank you so much, E.Marie! I'm very glad that the Scoobies are coming across as believable. As illogical, and at times despicable, as their behavior and attitudes were during the last years of the show, I still want to come up with at least semi-understandable motives for those bad behaviors and attitudes...and I want the Scoobies ultimately to recognize and to accept the consequences of them. For example, I racked my brain and finally reasoned/wanked that Buffy's insistence on stringing both guys along could be due to insecurity and fear as well as to selfishness and ego. I see her as a very, very, very immature person -- and that's not evil; it's just something that needs to be worked on. *cough*andoccasionallysmacked*

I was right pleased with that potty line, myself! And hee, a friend of mine who's reading this story said that Giles sounds like a beleaguered hall monitor, trying to keep everyone in line and get his work done AND obey the rules, all at once.

[tubbyk]

Psssssssssssssssssstttt, Socky ....

http://www.fuzzyshark.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=727
_________________
LAMENT: Chapter 21: - 16505 words

[Sock Monkey]

I'm so there!

*skitters off*

[Sock Monkey]

Part 12

Fred sprinkled a pinch of food into the aquarium water and watched her little brine shrimp paddle to the surface to eat their breakfast. A soft column of tiny, whispery bubbles rose from the filter pump’s aeration stone in a lilliputian current, making the water sparkle and dance and spreading the food particles out in a silent swirling do-si-do. Not taking her eyes from the tank, as if she were speaking to the shrimp rather than to Spike, she said, “Buffy came by here yesterday looking for you.”

The rummaging in the refrigerator ceased, and Fred saw him in her mind’s eye turning to stone as he deliberated how to reply. In the big mirror over the dresser she watched the frig door remain open, then slowly close by itself. A fork and a can of kippered herring floated off the pantry shelves and through the air, their reflection in the glass marking Spike’s invisible walk to the kitchen table.

“Did she?” he said finally. “What’d she want?”

“Didn’t say; just that she’d catch up with you later. She took off in kind of a hurry.” Tiring of the Guess-Where-In-The-Room-Spike-Is game, Fred turned away from the mirror and sat down at the table herself, facing him, to finish her bowl of cereal.

“Nothing new there,” Spike mumbled. He paused a moment, obviously working up to something. “Oz is gonna ask Willow if she’ll help us get a heads-up on Wolfram and Hart. What kind of power they’ve got now; who’s in charge…make sure no one’s there who doesn’t want to be.”

Fred lowered her spoon and looked at him. “Wesley?”

He nodded. “Wesley; Lorne; anybody else who might have been daft enough to sign a contract.”

“But if they don’t have a – a ‘shell’ to come back to…” she said in a bleak voice. The sound tore at Spike’s heart: pity for her; pity for the watcher. Unwillingly he imagined Pryce’s body still lying where he’d fallen, decomposed now beyond recognition. Or had the Senior Partners torn it apart in a retaliatory fury?

“If we can’t bring ‘em back solid, we can at least try to free their souls, I s’pose,” he said. “Send ‘em on to a better place.”

He considered telling her about Part Two of the plan – making the Old One a brand new body -- but decided to hold off. Illyria could be listening, and might take the offer the wrong way and try to slaughter everyone involved, so he’d made Willow and the others vow to keep their gobs shut about it. Harris had groused some, but the wolf cub had spit into his grubby little palm and held it out to Spike for a manly, binding handshake. He’d then crooked his finger and pledged, “Pinky swear,” which Spike had thought a bit girlish until Jordy explained that the person who broke such a promise must chop their pinky finger off.

*************************************************

“Is everyone here who needs to be?” Willow stood on the hearth in Michael’s parlor, a clipboard in her hand and a gleam of excitement in her eye. “Good. Okay. I’ve volunteered to reconnoiter whatever’s left of the L.A. branch of Wolfram and Hart. Thing is, I don’t know squat about the place. I could use a couple of tour guides, and a little villain-kicking muscle wouldn’t hurt, either. So anybody that wants to come with, write your names on the sign-up sheet. Your personal signatures will make it easier to pull you into my teleportation field. Plus, I don’t know how some of you spell your names.”

Xander raised his hand. “I’d like to sign up for the committee to make sack lunches for your trip. And I emphasize ‘YOUR’ trip.”

“Pussy,” Spike murmured.

“Damn right, and proud of it in this case. I think you’re all nuts. There aren’t enough of us here to take on Evil Incorporated, even if we do put on leafy helmets and combat-belly-crawl through their back door.”

“I was thinking more of an Erin Esurance look, myself,” Buffy said.

“Can I be Jonny Quest?” Thu Kheim asked. “But not Kim Possible. Her naked mole rat grosses me out.”

Giles stood up and shook his head grimly. “Buffy, Willow, I must ask you to reconsider! At least agree to wait until I send for more slayers to help you. There are seven stationed in Los Angeles now -- and they’ve reported no activity from the Wolfram and Hart organization in months. The company no longer even owns the building.”

“Which means it’s probably totally safe,” Buffy countered.

“No, it means that we can’t be sure of anything.”

“Giles is right,” Xander said, “There could be anything in that building. For all we know, The First Evil could have bought it. He could have rigged the whole thing with explosives. He could – he could disguise himself as one of you while you’re in there and fool you into God knows what. Who here’s been dead before? Show of hands.”

Angel, Buffy, Spike, Gunn, Fred, and Old Bob raised their hands slowly.

“Oh, come on, you guys!” Willow exclaimed, “Don’t weenie out on me!” She shot a defiant glare at Giles. “We’re the Slayerettes! Sunnydale’s Finest! Remember our motto?”

There was blank silence. Finally Oz guessed, “ ‘When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout’?”

“Not that one. The other one.”

“ ‘Sod off’?” Thu suggested. Spike patted her on the head approvingly.

The clipboard had made the circuit around the room and come back to Willow. She ticked off the names with satisfaction: “Angel, Oz, Buffy, Charles, Paloma – like the perfume, right? – Thu, Spike, Fred…” She looked up at Winifred. “You sure? Fisticuff-wise, it could get kinda hairy.”

Fred shrugged. “Been hairy before. And you might need a lab partner.”

Willow grinned. She was feeling jazzed now. She turned to Kay. “How about you? I hear you levitate a mean toothpick.”

Kay smiled and shook her head. “Mine’s not magic, though, Girlfriend. Just plain ol’ telekinesis. I’ll just stay here and guard Fort Asscrack.”

“Good enough. Guess we shouldn’t be too big a crowd, anyway. It kinda counteracts the whole ‘sneaking in inconspicuously’ thing.” Willow added her own signature to the bottom of the list and tore the paper from the clipboard. “Get together any weapons you think you’ll need. I’ll prepare the teleportation circle.”

The group broke up as each went to gather supplies. Giles stepped over to Michael, who had begun pushing the rugs and furniture from the middle of the room. “Wight,” he hissed, “You can’t allow this. Willow’s only doing this out of anger, and…well, I’m not sure why Buffy’s doing it. But you’ve got to order them to stop. They could all get themselves killed.”

Michael set down the floor lamp he was carrying and looked quietly at the distraught watcher. “If I don’t let them do it here, they’ll just go do it outside. And isn’t this what we’re in the business for? Rooting out evil creatures? I know my bunch isn’t very powerful, but we’re game. How’s that saying go…’The greatest evil is when good men stand by and do nothing’?”

Giles made no reply. He was tired and frustrated and at a loss for words. Michael picked the lamp up again. “There’s bourbon in the cupboard over the kitchen sink,” he said, not unsympathetically. “In case you’re feeling like this is one of those days when Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and Johnnie Walker are your only friends.”


Willow’s circle took up most of the space in the room. Poured from jars of powders and liquids only she knew the names of, it made a glorious, sticky mess on the floor. “Don’t worry,” she assured Michael, “It’ll disappear when we do.” Her band of volunteers took their positions inside the ring, where she’d appointed them. She laid the list of names on a plate, held the plate above her head, closed her eyes, and began to chant softly. Giles watched them from the dining room table, where he sat in defeat with a bottle and a shot glass in his hands. He thought of asking Yoder to try to reason with them, but Yoder was still absorbed in copying the bloody book. The people in the circle waited, standing perfectly still.

Then in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

[Sock Monkey]

Part 13

There was no sense of flying, or of things rushing past. No dizziness; no sensation of either losing or regaining consciousness. No sense of lost time. One moment they were in Michael’s living room, and the next moment they were standing in the lobby of the Hotel Hyperion.

It was just as they’d left it, from what they could see by the dim sunlight that filtered through the frosted glass front doors: a handsome old monarch of the Jazz Age, ready to be born again, and when Willow whispered "Utilities," the electric wall sconces lit up like so many birthday candles. The room was suddenly filled with the gleam of marble and bronze, art deco curves and rich wallpaper, grandeur stretching high and wide around them and marred only by a mist-thin layer of dust. For a moment they all simply stood and looked, and even those who’d called it home felt overwhelmed.

"Whoa." Thu Khiem drew a reverent breath. "This place is awesome!" She broke rank and scampered up the staircase, calling over her shoulder, "Are we going to camp out here? Can I pick a room?"

Angel turned to Willow. "We were supposed to land in the tunnels below the building."

"Sorry, I got the latitude a little off-course. But hey, better than going too far sideways and popping into the middle of the street, right? What with the daylight and speeding buses and…anyway, I’m pretty certain no one else has been in here lately."

"So these were your digs once upon a time," Spike said, flopping onto the round, velvet-upholstered lobby bench. "Not bad, in an expensive bordello ambience sort of way. Well, I suppose every hotel needs a theme."

They fanned out uncertainly. Gunn had already stepped away from the group and was standing in front of the check-out desk, gazing at its surface. At an inquiry from Angel, he looked up and said wistfully, "I thought maybe Lorne had left a note."

For a few moments they were all silent again, and there was no sound but the clump of Thu Khiem’s feet exploring the floor above them.

Finally Fred drew in a gusty sigh. "I’ll check the kitchen and see if everything’s still workin’. We can order some take-out and get settled before we go see the -- the other place."

"Not by yourself," Spike said quickly, and rose to go with her. Buffy winced and looked away.

She’d been staring at Spike ever since he’d made himself at home on the old sofa; hadn’t even realized it until now, her memories hammering and her eyes soaking him in. Legs stretched out languidly; elbows parked up on the sofa’s back; no trace of either the smoldering "come hither" expressions or the sad yearning ones that he’d once aimed her way for three years running.

He was teasing, that was all, sitting there looking so cool; he just wanted to see how she’d react. He wouldn’t stay upset with her. He never did. Once she got him alone and they’d talked things out, he’d drop the distance act and everything would go back to the way it was before. To normal. To-

Willow touched her gently on the arm. "We can call Xander, too; let him know we got here okay."

"Xander. Right." Buffy fished her cell phone from her pocket, looked at it absently as though she didn’t recognize its function, and put it back. She looked over in the direction that Fred and Spike had gone. "Does she always need an escort? I thought when danger threatened she was able to turn into a colorful version of me."

"Not unless Illyria’s in earshot," Willow explained. "And Fred says Illy’s a frequent-flyer kinda gal. She mostly just comes home to roost when the inter-dimensional walls become too thick to morph through comfortably or when a Io phase makes her feel like her molecules are expanding and the astral plane may collapse. Boy, I can identify with that."

Thu reappeared and leaned over the second-floor railing. "12B’s out of commission," she called down. "Its bathtub shower is all bashed in. And one of the suites looks like a Women’s Wear Daily exploded in it." She held up a brassiere and an over-sized pair of men’s pants.

"If walls could talk," Oz murmured.

**************************************

After weighing their options, it was decided that Fred would remain behind in the Hyperion, along with Thu and Gunn and Oz. The rest -- Willow, Angel, Buffy, Paloma, Spike – entered the tunnels from the Hyperion’s basement and followed them block by block (guided by Angel’s directions and the bright yellow glow of light given off by Willow’s hands) below the streets, then up through a loosely-bolted grating into the underground parking garage of what was once the Los Angeles Wolfram & Hart building.

Like the hotel, it was in surprisingly good shape – excellent, in fact. Cars were neatly parked; the ground and walls were spotless; even the lighting fixtures were free of decaying bugs.

"Not a crack anywhere," Spike marveled. "Thought you said it got shook all to hell."

"It did." Angel said grimly. He stepped up to an elevator door and ran his finger down the wall-mounted list of floors and departments. Accounting; Fragrances; Bath Products; Hair Care…

"The rumor was right." Paloma’s eyes widened to grey saucers. "Avon did take the place over! Fuck, I’m impressed."

Willow opened her fist, revealing a small puddle of gelatin. "I’m not so sure it’s Avon calling. I’d better apply the Hide In Plain Sight glamour before we go any further." She wiped on the forehead of each of them a little smear of the unguent, designed to make them invisible to all but each other. She grinned as she applied the stuff to the vampires. "Like you guys need more gel on your heads." To her surprise, Spike smiled back – a bit uneasily, true, but a smile nonetheless. She anointed herself with the last of the goop, and they entered the elevator.

They were assaulted first by the music of Doris Day’s "Que Sera Sera," which launched its attack from the speaker in the ceiling, and then by the cloying odor of talcum powder. "Oh, God," Buffy wheezed. "Cashmere Bouquet. Pardon me while I cough up a lung." Standing so close to both Spike and Angel simultaneously was doing a number on her pulse, as well; it was racing, and confined with them in this cramped space she wanted nothing so much as to turn and grab and press her face against cool, pale skin…instead she pulled her shirt collar up over her nose and added a muffled "What floor should we start with?"

"Let’s go to the basement and work our way up," Paloma suggested.

"Let’s not and just say we did," muttered Spike, grimacing.

"Eeny-Meeny-Chili-Beany," Willow chanted, pointing to each floor button in turn. "How about the thirteenth? That’s probably where all the evil weevils hang out."

Angel shook his head. "Willow, are you sure that incantation’s reliable?"

"It’s not an incantation. It’s Rocky & Bullwinkle."

Angel looked baffled. "It’s who?"

"Lucky Numero Siete," Paloma decided suddenly, and before anyone could stop her, she punched the seventh-floor button. "There." She crossed her arms and looked pleased. "Hey, didn’ you guys tell me once that this place had a department that kept goats?"

********************************

The elevator car rose, humming softly, and then with another soft hum the door opened.

The little group looked out into a corridor that could have been a page from a Mary Engelbreit magazine. Everywhere were ruffles and pastels. China candy dishes. Rose bouquets in pretty vases. Dainty white and gilt furniture; plush white carpet underfoot. Ceiling light fixtures with silk shades and flowery, glittering chandeliers. On the walls, happy paintings and cute plaques and shelved figurines that fairly oozed adorableness.

"Holy Hummel," Willow murmured.

Here and there, nattily-dressed men and women bustled to and fro, all smiling pleasantly as they went about their work. Angel and his team walked among them apparently unnoticed. Down the corridor…across a lobby…up an ornate flight of stairs…

"May I help you?"

A slender, immaculately-dressed young man met them at the head of the stairs and blocked their path. Cocking his head, he smiled at them; a knowing, somewhat unnerving smile. He bore the look of a patient minister about to deal with some rambunctious students in his Sunday school class.

The group stood mute and frozen, silently trying to decide their best course of action. "I thought we were invisible," Buffy muttered at Willow through clenched teeth.

"You are," the young man said, still smiling. "But I can smell you." He made a hostess-like gesture toward some restroom doors. "Have you tried our fine line of antiperspirants?"

The stairway below them was now filled with at least three dozen men and women, all standing quietly and wearing that same inexplicable smile. Buffy raised The Ax Formerly Known As Scythe to chest level in preparation to swing, and was startled when Angel uttered a sharp "No." She stared at him. "Come again?"

"Not yet."

"Angel-"

"Not yet."

She turned to the other vampire. "Spike." It was not a question; it was an order. Cover her back.

Spike was silent for several seconds. Finally he answered, shrugging almost too casually. "The man says wait."

Buffy stared at Spike, dumbfounded. She stared again at Angel. She turned to Willow and the chupacabra woman and stared at them.

Willow squirmed uncertainly and whispered, "They haven’t actually threatened us yet."

Now Angel took command once more. He addressed the strange gentleman. "We’d like to speak to whoever’s the head of this company."

"Why, certainly! Lady Louise is just a lovely, lovely person. Who wouldn’t want to speak to her?" He made another fluttering motion with his hand. "Please, follow me."

Down more hallways, and another ride in an elevator. The décor was so very different from that of Wolfram & Hart that it took several seconds for Angel to realize that they were at the door of his old office. The slender gentleman tapped on it lightly and let them inside.

Angel’s office appeared to have been turned into a combination lady’s boudoir and Hallmark gift shop…and at its French Rococo desk, in the spot where Angel had once held court, sat a tall, large, middle-aged woman in a lavender chiffon pantsuit. Nary a wrinkle marred her face in spite of her age. Her lips and cheeks were neatly rouged. Her hair was frosted bone white in an up-swept, backcombed, lacquered ‘do, and it puffed and swirled around her head like a cloud of spun-sugar cotton candy. She rose from her seat, beaming radiantly, and extended a plump hand.

"Well, hello, y’all! Welcome to Lady Louise Incorporated! I’m Louise Albright. But you can call me Lady Louise." She looked around the room and cocked her head as her staffer had done. "Now where are y’all?"

Willow sighed and gave up. "Be seen." With a clap of her hands, the invisibility spell was removed. Lady Louise’s smile doubled in brilliance.

"If you aren't the handsomest bunch! Now you just sit right down and tell me what I can do for you." She gave Willow’s hand a squeeze and swept back to her desk, the chiffon fabric billowing around her, and leaned back in her chair with a look of expectancy.

"We…" Angel wasn’t quite sure how to begin. "Some…some of us used to work here." He shifted to the edge of his chair and clinched his hands together tightly. "We haven’t been back since the previous owners vacated, and we just wondered…we left in kind of a hurry. I guess you could say there may be some loose ends that we need to tie up."

Louise studied him for a long moment. "You’re Angel, aren’t you?" Her laughter flowed through the air like warm, mellow syrup. "Darlin’, Lady Louise knows all sorts of things. That’s how she built this business."

"Right," Angel replied. "And just what is this business, exactly?"

"Beauty products. Products to enhance your life. Home décor, home help, home health. We build appliances that virtually run themselves, and a robot brand that’s second to none."

"Robots?" Spike mused. "Don’t suppose you ever made any ninja warrior models, did you?"

"Why, as a matter of fact, yes!" Louise said happily. "An anonymous client placed an order for several of those a few years ago. And that little hellmouth town south of here, the one that sank; we even got some orders from there for parts a time or two. We’re very proud of our robot line. We call it ‘Nearly Stepford.’"

"We need to look in your attic," Willow blurted out. She reddened as her companions glared at her in alarm. "Or – or your closets. Or…wherever there might be some of, you know, Wolfram & Hart’s stuff left behind." She glanced at the others defiantly. "Well, we do."

Their hostess raised her eyebrows. Then she nodded and flashed her million-watt smile. "Lady Louise likes people who cut right to the chase. What is it you’re lookin’ for, Baby Doll?"

With a little choke in her voice, Willow answered.

"A missing friend."

[Sock Monkey]

Part 14

In a heartbeat, Lady Louise was out of her chair, around the desk, and enveloping Willow in a vast motherly hug. “Oh, you poor sweet angel!” she exclaimed, clutching her tightly. “You poor little lamb! You just have yourself a good ol’ cry and then wipe those tears; everything’ll be okay!”

“Oof,” Willow grunted. Her face was smothered in Louise’s bosoms.

Angel and Buffy stirred restlessly in their seats. Louise waved a hand at them reassuringly and silently mouthed, "She's gonna be fine." She gave Willow one final squeeze before releasing her, then went to the office door and threw it open. "C'mon, y'all! We're goin' to have us a treasure hunt!" The group looked at one another dubiously before rising and following her.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting a scary Willy Wonka vibe from this," Buffy whispered, continuing to hold her ax at the ready.

"Well, I suppose there's worse things than death by choccies." Spike started to light a cigarette, but noticed the disapproving faces of the many employees nearby and thought better of it. "Although I'm not keen on us getting picked off one by one by Lady L's GQoompa Loompas." He turned and gave Willow a wicked smile. "Got your breath back, Red?"

"Gettin' there. And if anyone tells me to be careful what I wish for..."

Louise had collared Angel as they walked, tucking her arm in his and quizzing him on Wes's description and last known whereabouts. "If you want to perform a locator spell while we're lookin', be my guest!" She called back to Willow. "There's a lot of energy in that old attic room that's white all over. What'd y'all design it for, anyway? It's so static-y in there that we haven't been able to do a thing with it. Now I like white, but not solid white, and especially not after Labor Day. So we mostly just use it for storage. But let's start first with where Mr. Wesley had his offices."

************************************

A fidgety Charles Gunn paced the Hyperion’s kitchen floor. Oz and Fred had pulled stools up to one of the stainless steel prep tables and begun a game of Rummy with some playing cards they’d found in Lorne’s bedroom. Sodas and delivery pizza flanked their elbows. On one of the countertops a radio played softly.

“Charles, sit down,” said Fred. “You’re going to wear yourself out. I’m sure they’ll call soon.” She stood up and held her cards out. “Why don’t you take over my hand? Your concentration can’t be any worse than mine is, and Oz has already won all the M&Ms.”

Gunn frowned and shook his head, but took the offered cards and her seat. Oz calmly slid a handful of candies toward him. “I’ll stake you some plains, but I reserve the rights to the peanut ones.”

“What happened to the blue ones? Did you eat all the blues?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Canasta is a violent sport.”

Thu Khiem appeared from the employee passageway, bored with exploring, and hung over Gunn’s shoulder. “Can I check out the neighborhood? I could totally patrol it.”

Fred and Gunn exchanged uncertain glances. Finally Gunn cautioned, "Okay, but be careful. There's some mean folks out on these streets. If anyone messes with you- “

“I know, beat ‘em up but don’t kill ‘em. Unless they’re vamps.”

“Or telemarketers.” Gunn gave her a Black Power salute and she danced out the door.

Now it was Fred’s turn to be restless. She watched the game for awhile before saying, “I think I’ll go see what’s on TV.” When she’d left the room, Gunn shook his head again and worried his hand of cards in distraction.

“I wish I had your cool, Dan-My-Man. You’re like some kinda Tai Chi Kid. Don’t nothing upset you.”

Oz put an M&M in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “Inwardly turmoiling.”

*************************************

Giles had no Rummy cards on his table. But he did have rum. Or rather, its corn-based cousin, some fine Tennessee sippin’ whiskey, courtesy of Michael’s kitchen stash; and under happier circumstances he would have been enjoying it immensely. Now he was quiet and morose and close to being very un-sober.

“I shouldn’t have abandoned her,” he confessed to the bottom of his shot glass. “She didn’t know anything about running a household. Nothing about finances. No job skills. I just left her with a child and a little money and I fled.”

“Huh?” Xander said. “Wha- You got someone pregnant? When did this happen?”

“No, you silly berk. I mean Buffy. I shouldn’t have run away after she and her mother died. And I shouldn’t have run away again after she came back.”

Xander was flustered. “But…you didn’t run away. I mean, not for good. You came back later. Granted, a long time later…and only after you heard that Willow was trying to blow up the world…but hey, that doesn’t make you a bad father. Watcher. Whatever.”

“It doesn’t make me a very admirable one, either.”

With supreme effort, Xander ignored the pretty glass bottle and its lovely, conscience-numbing contents. “Well…speaking as the guy who fine-honed the art of abandoning and running away…” Up swam the memory of Anya’s face when he jilted her at the altar, and her anger when he suggested that she still be his girlfriend (RIGHTEOUS anger; I get that now), and her fury when he tried to order who she could and couldn’t rebound to (Okay, I don’t want to get that, but yeah...), and her horror when he tried to kill the guy she rebounded with (And I really don’t want to get that, ‘cause, Spike, but…)

He forgot what he was going to say, and stared at the ceiling helplessly.

**************************************

Thu roamed several streets beyond the hotel, dodging traffic and a few curious prostitutes, before spotting suspicious movement through the window of a little book shop. The shop door’s lock and latch were ripped open, and light glowed under the doorway of a back room. The slayer eased inside, squinting in the semi-darkness. Someone was lying on the floor beside the cash register.

“Looking for something?”

She jumped a little and wheeled around, and the man who’d been standing behind her bared his fangs with a blood-crusted grin. His pinched, wrinkled forehead seemed almost to wink at her.

Thu looked at him as if bewildered. Then her gaze shifted suddenly from his face to a point just over his shoulder, and her eyes widened and she gasped in shock. The vampire turned for a fraction of an instant, to see what she was seeing behind him. There was nothing…and then the vampire was also nothing, as Thu yanked up her stake and popped him in the heart.

“Dumb ass.”

The danger now past, she knelt beside the exsanguinated woman on the floor and felt for a pulse, hoping for one but not really expecting it. Sure enough, the poor thing was dead…and now she’d need to be kept that way.

This was one of the aspects of hunting that Thu hated. From her pocket she produced a slender wooden toothpick and positioned it over the victim’s chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, gently smoothing a lock of hair out of the woman’s face. Then with a quick push, she sank the tiny sliver of wood through the skin and deep into the heart muscle. The wound it left was quite small, and when she applied to it a smear of zit-concealing cream from a tube in her other pocket, it became almost invisible. With luck, the coroner wouldn’t notice it until well after the time period for rising had passed -- if it was even noticed at all.

From the dimly-lit doorway in the back of the shop came the sound of a feminine voice, humming a little tune. Thu entered the room cautiously. No vamps leaped out at her, though – only a young woman sitting cross-legged on the floor and clutching something thin and flat to her chest. One of the staff, from the looks of it; an employee tag was pinned to her blouse and a pencil was tucked above her ear.

“I’ve found a story about Miss Edith!” the woman squealed, and held up a book that Thu recognized from her elementary school library called The Lonely Doll.

“…although the pictures don’t favor her at all. But she’s very naughty; disturbs all of Mummy’s things, and then the cross bear beats her! See, he’s slapping her about the legs and bum. After that it’s all better, and he promises to beat her again very soon.”

“That’s not what it says,” it was on the tip of Thu’s tongue to say. But maybe it was better to play along with the poor lady, to keep her calm. So instead she answered, “Wow, that sounds like a good book,” as she dialed for an ambulance on the phone at the manager’s desk.

“Yes, it is,” the woman continued to ramble. “But not quite so good as the doll we saw on telly that time. Nice Mr. Serling; he had a lovely painting of it, and then he showed what the dolly could do. I wanted to find him afterward and introduce him to my Edith, but he wasn’t at home and we couldn’t wait for him long. We were ever so busy that night.”

She paused with a wistful sigh. “His dolly was very wicked, and had such sharp little teeth! I miss Edith so. And poor William; he’s lost to me as well. I do like the new girl much better, though. She doesn’t poke about with sticks like the other, and she’s got a rat in her attic. A great blue rat. If I’m very, very still, I can hear it gnawing.”

“Uh-huh.” Thu had stopped listening to her and stuck a finger in her ear to better hear the 911 dispatcher. “No, sir, I can’t give you my name. But the body’s by the check-out counter, and there’s a live woman hiding in the manager’s office. I think she’s in shock.”

She hung up, then looked at her bare hands and cringed. If Michael had warned her once, he’d warned her a squillion times how messed up things could get on an out-of-town slaying if she could be traced to a crime scene. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer on the desk; she grabbed it and used a squirt of the gel and the edge of her shirt to rub her fingerprints from the phone. “Don’t worry,” she called over her shoulder as she worked. “The police will be here in a few minutes. They’ll take good care of you. You just stay here where it’s safe, and I’m gonna wait outside for them.” Behind some really big bushes, she added silently.

There was no answer. When she turned around, the woman was gone.

“Lady?”

Just outside the entrance of the store she found the doll book dropped and forgotten. Half a block away, she came across the discarded name tag and pencil.

“Poor thing,” Thu lamented. “I hope she’ll be okay.” She holstered her stake and moved on to the next street.

**************************************

Oz won two more hands (but generously allowed Charles to eat the M&Ms anyway) before wandering out to the lobby, following the distant sound of the television. It seemed to be coming from the concierge’s apartment – and when he poked his head inside, he saw that there was indeed a TV set there, tuned to a local station. But Fred wasn’t in front of it.

Oh well, he reasoned, it was a big hotel with all kinds of places to spread out. He watched the news broadcast for a few minutes, then meandered around through the other rooms: restaurant, gift shop, bar, housekeeping. Eventually he made his way down to the basement, where the light had been left on for the away team and the hatch to the sewer opened.

Fred’s clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

Oz clucked his tongue. “That’s never a good sign.”

**********************************

Author’s Note: The book The Lonely Doll referred to in this chapter was written by Dare Wright in 1957, and its main character really is a doll named Edith. The television show referred to was the 1970 episode “The Doll” from Season 1 of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. (Yes, this was the ep that made every kid of my generation absolutely TERRIFIED of antique dolls for years.)

[Sock Monkey]

By the way, here's Mr. Serling's dolly.



GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

http://www.nightgallery.net/index.html?title.html&0

[kitmarlowescot2]

Dru !!! And she didn't eat Thu. Nice to know she approves of Fred.

[Sock Monkey]

Hee, I love writing Dru so very, very much. I especially like to think of her making Spike drive her to Rod Serling's house.

[AlisonSwift]

GASP. That was Dru?

*oblivious*

Oh I cannot wait to see where this goes!

I wonder if Dru ever got into Barbie Dolls.
_________________
"Buffy loves Angel. Angel loves Buffy. And I love ho-hos." --Joss Whedon

[Sock Monkey]

[Sock Monkey]

Part 15

“Three vampires dusted, one victim saved, and a lost dog dropped off at the homeless shelter! They’re gonna call the ASPCA to come get it in the mor…”

Thu’s voice died off in the Hyperion’s echoing silence as she picked up the large note left for her in the middle of the lobby floor. She scanned its contents, then rolled her eyes.

“Oh, great,” she muttered. “Stupid Old One.”

******************************************

Twin circles of flashlight glare bobbed along the ground of the sewer tunnel and glinted off its wet, fetid walls as Oz followed Illyria’s trail and Charles followed Oz. The taller man grunted as a startled rat bolted across his foot. “This here’s proof of Gunn’s Corollary: ‘The larger the crisis, the bigger the stanky hole.’ You sure you’re goin’ the right way? Spike said she doesn’t have a smell.”

“She doesn’t, but she’s leaking Essence of Fred. I guess sub-letting your shell to a human’ll do that. It’s like tobacco odor trapped in the furniture.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure Fred’ll appreciate being compared to a cigarette butt,” Gunn muttered. He skidded through a stagnant puddle and almost dropped his light. When he recovered his balance he added, “If this tunnel’s leading where I think it’s leading…”

*******************************************

“Welcome to Lady Louise’s Laboratory!” Louise threw open the door to what had once been Fred’s research lab; now it was painted pink, smelled of cosmetics, and bustled with smiling, salmon-smocked technicians. Louise clapped her hands to gain their attention, and called out, “Hey, y’all! Any of you seen a ghost around here?” The techs looked thoughtful, then shook their heads. “Okay!” replied Louise gaily, “Lemme know if you do!” She swept back into the hall, towing her guests along with her.

“That was a very thorough investigative technique,” Angel said with a trace of sarcasm. Louise patted him on the arm.

“Don’t you worry, Honey. We’ll turn that poor fella up somewhere. It might mean gettin’ in touch with your ugly old law firm, but if they’ve got his soul bound by a contract -- C’mon, Buffy! Don’t lag behind and make me frog-march you to the next department! -- one of our attorneys might be able to negotiate a deal for him.” She studied Angel’s head as she spoke, then reached up and fingered his hair and murmured, “I’ve got some moisturizer that’ll take those split ends right out.”

Angel’s eyes widened and he fought back a retort.

They entered yet another set of offices – there’d been so many during his tenure that he couldn’t remember half of them – and halted for a rest while Willow began another magic-powered search.

“Y’know,” Louise commented, “I’ve always wondered how y’all got out of that alleyway after you blew this place up. I’ve heard all sorts of stories. …You don’t know, either? None of you hollered out an incantation or kicked open a vortex or something? Well, that is odd. Did you cast some kind of rescue spell on ‘em, Sugar?”

“No, not me. I never knew about it ‘til later. But now that I think about it…” Willow paused in her tracks and said slowly, “…Fred told me that she used to recite all kinds of spells and stuff when she was trapped in that Illyria void, to try to escape it or just keep from going stir-crazy. If her soul had kept a psychic connection to her body, even a small one, any one of those spells she chanted could have had an effect on it – her body, I mean – and maybe on anyone else standing near it…especially if her body was feeling boatloads of stress and was in a highly-charged mystical environment at the same time…”

“And Jupiter aligned with Mars,” Buffy added.

“…Which, Monsters Inc comin’ at‘cha down an alley with the Senior Partners’ blessing; that definitely covers both criteria. And she did say she felt something whoosh past her once. ‘Course it’s a million-to-one shot that it happened that way, but then The Dukes of Hazzard is being made into a theatrical movie so I guess anything’s possible.”

From atop the desk she’d perched on, Paloma looked at the frosted-glass door to the hall and announced, “Uh-oh.”

The door exploded with an ear-splitting crash…and in its shattered frame stood Illyria.

*****************************************

“…She still needed guidance. She wasn’t ready yet to make those kinds of decisions herself. She’d have let her heart get in the way of her common sense; wouldn’t have taken the proper safety measures…I made the choice for her because it was my duty to err on the side of caution on her behalf…” Giles’ voice was beginning to slur a little.

Xander gave his shoulder a comforting pat. “Of course it was; you had to do what you had to do. …Wait, are we still talking about Buffy?”

“No,” Giles said thoughtfully, gazing into his glass. “Willow, I think.”

He turned away from Xander and with an effort picked up his monologue again, this time addressing the stinky ghost, Old Bob. “You see, don’t you, that I couldn’t allow us to get involved; Angel had made his bed and he’d just have to lie in it! He turned evil once before, after all. And Wesley appeared to be in league with them, too…how was I supposed to know that it was his sweetheart? Eh? Never told us anything. Andrew never said a word.”

Old Bob simply stood and looked at him vacantly. “Oh, bollocks,” Giles sighed. “Why am I telling this to a bloody apparition?”

Bob scratched himself and didn’t answer.

****************************************

“YOU!” Illyria scowled and pointed to Buffy. The slayer had only an instant to stare at this bizarre, leather-clad version of Fred -- and then the Old One had her by the arm and flung her into the hallway.

The ax flew out of her hands and clanged against the metal railing of an interior balcony overlook. Before she could scramble to recover it, Illyria smashed into her, fists flying, and sent them both toppling over the railing and down two flights to land on the mezzanine below. The impact there knocked them apart, but failed to slow them down. They leaped to their feet at the same time and Illyria charged again. Now Buffy was furious, too; she grabbed a heavy potted palm and swung it like a club and clouted Illyria in the head with it. The pot burst, spraying soil everywhere. Illyria roared with anger and dove at her, whipping her head aside to avoid the handful of dirt that Buffy threw at her face. Pummeling one another, they rolled across the floor, smashing through furniture, locked in combat as tightly as a pair of hissing, spitting cats, as startled employees shrieked in alarm and dodged out of their way.

Three more thuds sounded behind them…and then they were being pried apart, Angel pinioning Buffy while Spike and Paloma dog-piled Illyria. Their legs continued to kick and piston, each determined to deal her opponent one last crippling blow.

Buffy glared daggers at Illyria. “What,” she gasped, almost dragging Angel piggyback with her, “besides too much blue rinse, is WRONG with you?”

“You upset the order!” Illyria fired back. Paloma mashed her full weight across Illyria’s chest and swore as the Old One almost bucked her off. “You would steal the shell’s consort! The Burkle cannot rest; she weeps and fears. She gives me no PEACE!” Enraged, she sank her teeth into Spike’s elbow.

“AAAAAGH!” Spike howled.

“SEPARATE!”

Willow was there, suddenly, sparks flying from her fingers. She whipped her arms out to her sides, and the two groups shot apart. Angel and Buffy slammed backward into a wall. Illyria and Spike and Paloma plowed into a credenza.

For approximately fifteen seconds everyone was still. Plaster dust wafted through the air.

The room lay in utter silence.

Oz and Gunn came jogging in from a corridor, panting. They reached the center of the room and stopped. They looked at the ruins. They looked at the people.

A Margaret Keane painting fell off of the wall.

They looked at each other.

Without a word, they turned around and jogged back out.

*******************************************

“I feel it. Her fear. It permeates my blood like rancid oil.” Illyria paced back and forth at the end of the mezzanine where Spike had hustled her. The distance was enough to give them a little privacy, as long as they kept their voices down.

Which Illyria didn’t.

The rest of the group -- including Gunn and Oz, who’d decided to come back after all – milled somewhat ineffectually at the fight scene, straightening the mess, nursing their wounds, apologizing to their host. (Louise, to her credit, smiled patiently and assured them that every once in a while a good old-fashioned fistfight helped clear the air. She said it even as her eyes lingered mournfully on the destroyed credenza.)

“Look, Blue, there’s nothing…tell her there’s nothing for her to worry about…I wouldn’t…” He drew a deep, exasperated breath and took out his package of smokes and lighter. For a moment he paused, remembering the threatening expressions of the god-knew-how-many weird employees. Then he muttered, “Fuck it,” and stuck three cigarettes in his mouth and lit them all at once.

“She thinks that there is.”

He clicked the lighter shut and said nothing.

Oz walked over to them. “I think we’re all gonna call it a night; maybe come back tomorrow when things are a little less homicidal.”

Illyria stopped pacing and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Man Dog. Why is this happening? Why are her thoughts driving me?”

Oz didn’t blink an eye. “Because you can act out what she’s afraid to express.”

She released him and banged her fists against her forehead. “But we are two -- separate -- beings!”

“Sharing the same brain.”

Illyria glared at him. “Our emotions…Fred’s and mine…they’re mixing together. I want it to stop. I cannot think for myself anymore!” Everyone was staring at her now. Her voice rose to a hysterical bellow. “We cannot THINK! WE WAIT FOR THE CLICK AND IT NEVER COMES! IT’S NOT COMIN’ – WE KEEP LISTENIN’ AND WRITIN’ AND IT JUST WON’T…” Her arms fell to her sides and her voice dropped to a whisper. “It just won’t come.”

“Fred?” Oz said softly.

From the neck up, her blue coloring rippled and changed to pink and brown. The Old One’s leathery clothing squeaked as she drew up her arms and hugged herself, quiet and miserable.

“Yeah. It’s me. For now.”

*****************************************

In silence, they made their way back to the Hyperion, and one by one drifted into their bedrooms. When Paloma reached hers, she found Thu Khiem already in her pajamas and asleep in the other queen-sizer. She slumped onto her own bed and began removing her shoes. Thu whimpered in her sleep, then frowned and twitched, and her head started tossing from side to side. Paloma stood up and took a closer look at her, and saw a sheen of sweat on the little girl’s face.

“Hey,” she whispered, giving her a shake. “Wake up. You’re havin’ a nightmare.”

“…Dead inside!” Thu hissed, rolling onto her side. Paloma shook her again, and slowly she returned to consciousness. She sat up, groggy and pale.

Paloma flopped back onto her own bed again. “Damn, Chica, you look like something the cat dragged in and the dog wouldn’t have! You okay?”

“I guess so.” Thu closed her eyes and was very, very still. “Where’s Illyria and Fred?”

“Ah, they’re alright. The usual drama. That lawyer place ain’t so bad anymore either; some Maybelline queen’s runnin’ it now. Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.” The chupacabra yawned and pulled the covers over her shoulders.

“Paloma, are slayer dreams just stuff that other slayers have dreamed before? Or are they things that really happened to other slayers?”

Paloma’s voice was sleepy and muffled. “Uh…real things, I think. Like, shit that happened and you inherit their memories about it.”

She dozed off before she could elaborate further. Thu, however, continued to sit up in bed, and her hands twisted the covers back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

****************************************

Fred and Buffy kept a far distance from each other on the trek back to the hotel. Louise had seen them to the parking lot, waving her hand as they disappeared into the sewer drain and calling, “Y’all come back tomorrow after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Things always look brighter in the mornin’!” It was only when Buffy had opened the door to enter her suite that Fred halted beside her and said in a voice made hollow with despair, “I’m sorry. I really am. I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Buffy replied lightly – a bit too lightly, Willow knew. “It happens.” She flashed Fred a tight-lipped smile that may or may not have been genuine and disappeared into her room, shutting the door behind her.

Fred’s room was farther down the hall; like Buffy, she entered it and shut the door.

And then she pressed her face against the wall and sobbed, the heartache wracking her body into ugly, shuddering spasms. She didn’t hear the door open and shut again.

“Listen to me.” In the darkness Spike’s arms wrapped around her like vises. His voice was a harsh whisper in her ear. “Listen to me.”

He turned her in the dark; turned her in his arms to face him and gripped her head in his hands; pressed his forehead against hers. “I love you. I will never, ever leave you. For anyone.”

They were feverish words, growled out through gritted teeth, and his face was rigid with their intensity. He crushed a kiss onto her mouth, and then his hands slid lower, became gentler, and he eased her out of the cat suit and into their bed.


**********************

[Sock Monkey]

Part 16

Most of the occupants of the Hyperion failed to go to sleep that night. They brooded, or debated, or agonized, or prayed, or chewed their lips in thought. More than once, one or another would slip from their rooms, quietly, to wander the halls like troubled ghosts.

Buffy, unable to sleep, took up a stake and made her way downstairs: past the kitchen where Oz and Willow were deep in a low-voiced conference; past Gunn in the lobby as he gazed into the dark and remembered when their hotel was full of life and optimism and a beautiful girl had eaten pancakes. Past the elevator and a sudden whiff of expensive perfume. (Cordelia? Is that…No way; hello, Overactive Imagination!) Past the laundry.

She wasn’t trying to steal Spike back. What did Fred think this was, Eighth Grade? She had far more important things to do! Mysteries to solve. Missing people to find. Villains to stake. She already had a boyfriend, anyway. Ang- no, that wasn’t right; it wasn’t Angel waiting for her in Rome…and Angel wasn’t hers anymore, either. Not that she cared. She was still muffins. Or sourdough. What was it she’d called herself? With a huge effort she tried to block out the thought of Angel and Cordy sleeping together.

A set of ornate doors opened onto the courtyard.

It was as lovely as the rest of the hotel, if a bit weed-choked. Its Spanish tiles still glowed with color; black wrought-iron decoration coiled and dipped. The dim electric lanterns from another era bathed it all in soft, spectral lighting. A marble fountain with dead pipes stood in the center of the yard, and its basin was dry and silent.

Beside the fountain, huddled on a wood-and-iron weatherworn bench, she spotted a solitary figure.

Thu Kheim briefly raised her eyes as Buffy sat down beside her.

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh? That’s one of the downsides of being a slayer; your internal clock gets completely screwed up. You just don’t get tired the way normal people do. It’s great for all-night partying and cramming for tests; not so great when you’re lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.”

Thu didn’t respond. Buffy peered at her, a little puzzled and concerned. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, Thu straightened in her seat: feet on the ground, hands in her lap. She drew in a slow, deep breath. “I had a slayer dream.”

“Oh, those. Don’t worry about them too much.” Buffy smiled at her reassuringly. She’d had this talk with many of the new girls; Giles had even composed a pamphlet for the purpose, to be distributed to each new slayer, explaining the whole dream thing. (Andrew had offered to illustrate it with Japanese graphic novel drawings, but Giles had politely declined.) “They’re kind of strange, but you get used to them, and they don’t happen that often. They can even be helpful, sometimes; you see new fight moves, learn all about demons from other countries-“

“I dreamed about what you did to Spike.”

She froze, the rest of “The Talk” dying on her lips.

Thu didn’t quite turn to look her in the face, but she studied Buffy from the corners of her eyes. “The bad stuff. Not the sploogy stuff; I dreamed about that, too, but I don’t care about that and anyway it’s none of my business and if I want to see porno I’ll get it off the internet. But why did you keep leading him on if you hated him?”

The older slayer’s face turned a sickly color of whey. “I didn’t – I didn’t hate him.”

“Yes, you did. You hated everybody. You even hated you.” Thu looked as if she were amazed at the thought of it; that a person could harbor so much hatred. “But you weren’t mean to anybody else. Just to Spike. And he hadn’t done anything – except regular vampire stuff. It wasn’t his fault you got taken away from your mom.”

Mom. Buffy’s teeth clamped down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling. “You don’t understand,” she said finally. “It was…very…complicated.”

“So what? That didn’t give you permission to act like a douche bag.” Thu was wound up now, and relentless. “Or to treat him like shit. Dead things do, to, have feelings. ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small.’ …Horton the Elephant,” she added unnecessarily.

“…I know.”

“Then why?” Thu’s troubled face searched her companion’s. “You beat him. You beat him so bad you almost killed him, and you called him horrible names and left him to die and you didn’t even care! We’re not supposed to use our powers to torture anyone, Buffy. We’re supposed to, you know, just quick kill ‘em. Or leave ‘em alone. That’s what you told that Faith girl.”

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Buffy whispered, from a part of her mind that had retreated as far from her guilty conscience as possible. “I ran away so I wouldn’t.”

“But you never told him you were sorry for it. And you let him sit in that evil school basement, like, forever, before you finally told anyone he was there and got him out. I know ‘cause I saw. You’d go in and look at him and when he’d ask you for help you’d run off. If you didn’t want to help him yourself, why didn’t you get someone else to? His friend Clem would’ve come and got him if you’d told him, I’ll bet.”

Because I didn’t want anyone to know. Because it was partly my fault that he was so messed up. He was my dirty little secret. She’d tried to hide him, the way a child would hide a vase she’d broken, shoving the pieces under the sofa and hoping that her parents wouldn’t come across them. Hoping, wildly, that maybe they wouldn’t even notice the vase was missing.

She attempted to tighten her face into Exasperated Older Sister Mode. “Have you had any dreams that didn’t involve Spike?”

“Well, yeah! That one about Faith. And sometimes that I’m slaying in Paris, France. And once I dreamed I was some freaky African girl dressed like Wilma Flintstone. But I don’t know any of those people, and Spike’s my friend, so the Spike dreams are the ones that – that bother me.”

Don’t think about him. Don’t. If only she could stop thinking about him, maybe Thu would stop dreaming about it. Would stop picking up her memories. Stop learning her secrets. Stupid proximity, making everything worse.

Thu was speaking again.

“…Sometimes in the dreams I’m kind of off to the side, just watching the other slayer do stuff…but sometimes I am the other slayer, only I don’t always get it. Like in my dreams when I’m you. I know that we’re sad and mad in them, and I know what made us feel like that, but I don’t know why it did. Like, when you had to leave Mom and come back to life, at least you’d found out that there really is a Heaven, and that it’s a great place and that you’ll for sure get to be with her again someday. Didn’t that make you feel glad, even a little bit?”

Had it? If the thought had ever crossed her mind, it hadn’t lingered. It’d been forgotten in the deluge of bleakness and resentment that was her homecoming, swept far out to sea in that ugly, mud-filled tide. After that, there’d been nothing left but her anger, and Spike -- who’d tried his best in his own crippled, screwed-up way to help her and had wound up becoming her personal combination punching bag and human dildo. And she’d kept her friends fooled about that for months, too, except perhaps for Tara who’d been too kind to say that she damn well knew the truth. He called himself a monster, but he wasn’t the only one. The real monster was me.

And the truth now was that she did want him back. She wanted that very, very much.

“Buffy?”

“Huh?”

“It’s starting to rain. And we didn’t bring extra pajamas.”

A large, wet splash landed on Buffy’s head. So they left the courtyard, dodging between the raindrops, and went back through the pretty glass doors into the Hyperion proper, up to their respective rooms, and each girl’s pensive, unhappy face mirrored the other.

**********************************

Though not a slayer, Fred too lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. At first she’d stared in a fog of fearful emotion, and felt helpless and miserable. But then that helpless feeling began to piss her off. Damn it, she’d been through worse than this. Survived mucked-up relationships and paranormal activities. Survived death, for Pete’s sake. Survived the void. Survived a hellish slave dimension for five years, with only her wits and no magic or super-strength. Let’s see if a slayer could pull that off! She was fed up with sniveling. A bundle of problems were at hand, and it was time to put on her big-girl pants and stop feeling sorry for herself and solve them.

For about an hour she lay quietly, still staring at the ceiling – but this time her brain was back in its element, and grappled with electronics and metaphysics, and began to formulate a plan. She eased upright and out of bed, being careful not to wake her demon lover. She got dressed in the semi-dark. As she started for the door, she bumped into Illyria’s leathery outfit on the floor where they’d dropped it earlier. She paused just long enough to kick off her sandal and place her bare foot in the middle of the pile so that the clothes and boots could liquefy and be absorbed through her skin and back up into her body. That done, she slipped into the hallway…thinking that with any luck, this might be the last time she’d have to perform that little chore.

*****************************

She found them in the kitchen, at a table spread with pencils and paper as if they were working on a due-tomorrow school project.

“Oh, good, you’re both still up. You’re just who I need. I’ve been thinking about Illyria, and Louise’s robotics department, and I’ve got an idea,” Fred announced, hugging herself with glee over her new plan.

Oz and Willow looked at her and at each other in surprise, and then Willow smiled at Oz. “You thinkin’ she’s thinking what we’re thinking?” She held up one of their worksheets for Fred to see. “Tah-dah!”

Fred’s grin spread from ear to ear. “Now we’re cookin’ with gas!”

*****************************

When the rest of the Hyperion residents began to stir in the breaking day and plot their second foray into Lady Louise Inc., they found a note on the refrigerator announcing that Oz and Fred and Willow had gone on ahead of them.

*****************************

They entered the LLI parking garage – Angel, Gunn, and Spike; Buffy, Thu, and Paloma – at the same time as the company’s employees, and the ride in the elevators with those weird, smiling people made their skin crawl. (The Muzak selection this time was an instrumental version of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” by Burt Bacharach, and Gunn and Angel both found themselves musing that Lorne would think this workplace was a dream come true.) In the lobby, a cherry-cheeked receptionist who looked alarmingly like Tammy Faye Bakker greeted them with a squeal and ushered them up the stairs and through a set of doors marked with the signage of another unexplored LLI facility:

NEARLY STEPFORD
ROBOTS, CYBORGS, BIONIC PROSTHETICS, AUTOMATONS
~please wipe your feet~

From the bowels of this busy laboratory, Willow and Louise waved them over. They wormed their way past dozens of work stations…to an area of the room where to their horror they spotted Fred lying prone in a horizontal chamber somewhat like an MRI machine, with nothing but her face visible through the only glass window in the chamber that wasn’t darkened. Red and blue lights moved back and forth within its walls, over and under her body. She lay perfectly still, eyes opening and closing at the signal of a soft beep. Louise stood beside the chamber’s door, smiling happily.

“What the hell…”

“FRED! GET OUT OF THERE!”

“I think it’s an iron lung!”

“Are you okay? Say something!”

“Willow, what’s going on?”

“Can I tan next?”

“Bitch, if you don’t turn her loose…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, HOLD IT!” Willow bellowed. “It’s all right! We’re just taking pictures of her! Jeez, don’t have a cow.”

“Pictures?” Spike blustered. A technician carrying a toaster-sized device approached the chamber; with barely a glance back at him Spike stopped him in his tracks by grabbing him by the throat with one hand and lifting him off his feet. “Pictures?”

Oz’s face appeared from behind a monitor booth. “Body image scanning. It’s a safe procedure,” he said calmly.

“It’s for the robot,” Willow explained.

“I don’t care if it’s for the bloody Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! FRED!”

“She can’t answer you right now; it’ll screw up the scan. Don’t worry, she’s awake and fine with it. This was her idea and ours!”

“I can’t see her! They've got her all covered up!”

“Well, duh, naked! How else could they get accurate images of her body? You want ‘em to turn up the lights and let everyone see her in her birthday suit?”

Angel, still looking bewildered, tapped Spike’s shoulder. “Spike, he’s turning blue…wait, what robot?”

“The one we’re making for Illyria.”

That shut them up…for a moment. They stared at Willow. Spike dropped the strangling tech.

“Remember the Buffybot?” Willow reminded them, waving her hands with excitement. “And April? How they were mucho-strong and passed for human? Their parts came from this lab division. Louise has agreed to let Illyria try inhabiting one of the completed ‘bots; if her consciousness can meld with the robotic computer ware and learn to control it the same way she learned to control Fred’s brain, she’d have her own body and she and Fred could be separated! We’re going to have her try out a prototype model, and if it works, they’ll give it a human-lookin’ outer covering. We thought maybe if we used Fred’s features for that, Illyria would feel more at home in it. I mean, yeah, it’d be nice if we could give her her original monster form, but that’d be too cost-prohibitive and harder to explain to the general public. It’s gonna be weird enough that she’ll still have blue skin and hair.”

She paused and caught her breath. “So. Any questions?”

Paloma raised her hand. “Does Illyria know about this?”

“Uhhhhhhh…not yet.”

[Sock Monkey]

Part 17

“All done!” Louise announced gaily. “Y’all turn around so she can throw on some clothes!” A smiling female technician rolled a hospital screen in front of the imaging chamber, and another opened the chamber’s door and pulled Fred’s gurney out. A few moments later Fred pushed the screen aside, fully dressed and looking quite pleased. When she saw Spike’s stricken face, her expression sobered. He snatched her up into a ferocious hug.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” he rasped, his mouth pressed against her ear. “I was about to rip that machine apart with my bare hands.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. We’re just so excited about it and it’s a really good solution, honestly! So we wanted to get started on it right away. They’ve even bumped us ahead of two other projects, and there’s a breakfast buffet, and finally someone in California gets that hash browns need to be served with white flour gravy. I didn’t mean to freak you out.” Fred wiggled around in his embrace until she could look him in the eye, and added softly, “This is really important.”

Buffy bit her lip and looked the other way.

*****************************************

Ever the hostess, Louise gave the group a lounge area to take a break in, complete with sandwiches and coffee, before she breezed off on whatever rounds were on her schedule. Willow stuffed her mouth with cream cheese and watercress on rye and tried to speak around it. “Iss is oh ool; I an’t wai- um- wait fo’ Iweeria ooh ge’ here!”

Buffy remained unconvinced. “Look, shouldn’t we let people we’re familiar with handle this thing? People that we know are professionals? I can call Riley. His group of ex-Initiatives is probably just as up on building robots as these-”

“No,” Oz snapped. His face had gone pale and grim, and he hugged his arms protectively across his chest. She stared at him in surprise.

“Oz, Riley’s your friend, remember? He helped us rescue you from Walsh’s lab. His team is – well – hey, are you all right?”

“What Wolf Boy’s trying to say,” Spike explained, “Is that some of us here have had our fill of blokes who play with electrical shock devices.” He rubbed the back of his head unconsciously, and Fred tensed as her hand went to her throat.

“Okay, chill, I won’t call,” Buffy said, understanding about Spike and Oz but uncertain what the deal was with Fred and her neck. It was there again: yet another unspoken bond between others that she was not privy to, and it made her uncomfortable. She found herself missing the company of Faith and their fellow slayers. Glumly she poked at her sandwich. “Are any of these pickle loaf?”

Gunn poured himself a cup of coffee. “I gotta admit, if this lady’s ‘bots are anything like what we saw at Wolfram & Hart, Illyria’s gettin’ some classy set of wheels. Powerful, too. She’s probably gonna make Robocop look like a wind-up toy.” He took a gulp of java as the lounge door opened and a young woman backed into the room with a fresh plate of pastries…and then he choked and sprayed the mouthful of coffee across his lap.

“CHARLES!” the young woman squealed with delight.

Gunn stared and set his cup down. “Harmony?”

**************************************

“It is you! Oh my god, I thought they were just pulling my finger when they said you guys were here! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Harm flopped down the pastry tray and threw her arms around Gunn’s neck. “And FRED! You’re, like, alive and stuff!” She released her choke hold on Gunn and danced over to Winifred. “And you’re not that ooky blue thing anymore!” She gave Fred an enthusiastic hug, then added cautiously, “You’re not, are you?”

Fred grinned. “Not at the moment.”

“Oh, good, ‘cause I guess I just totally insulted her and I don’t want to get punched in the face again. Welcome back!” She turned and looked at the rest of the group one by one, murmuring, “Don’t know you -- don’t know you -- hi, Oz! – ew, slayer – Blondie Bear! – Willow, hi, I guess – hi, Angel! You’re not still pissed at me, are you?”

Angel groaned. “Please don’t tell me you work here.”

“Well, yeah! Thanks to your nice reference report paper!”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You gave her a reference?”

“Shut up, Spike.”

“Hey, I’m a valuable part of this company!” Harmony said, offended. “And I get a major discount on the makeup and hair care products, and their shoe line is killer. And no, Buffy, I haven’t eaten anybody in ages, so just leave me alone. Angel, make her put away that stake.”

“It’s all right, Buffy,” Angel said quietly, then to Harmony he added, “You’d better be telling the truth.”

“Pinky swear! They’ve got an even stiffer no-kill policy here than our old job had.”

“I can’t believe I’m listening to this,” Buffy said, hands on hips and still holding her stake, its tip pointing directly at her former classmate-turned-vampire. “Harmony, I swear if you so much as raise a hickey on anyone human, your ass is ash.”

Harmony stepped back nervously, but gave her a defiant pout. “Meanie.”

“Hey, cool; petit fours,” Paloma said. She scooped up one of the small iced cakes from the pastry tray and popped it into her mouth, her sharp little piranha teeth gleaming. “Y’all have dulces like this every day?” At Harmony’s blank look she added, “Desserts.”

“Oh! Yeah, sure. I don’t speak Italian.” Harm paused as another staff member waved and gestured to her from the hallway. “Oh, they’ve got a robot ready for you in the lab! Come on; we can take the cakes with us.” She grabbed the tray and waved back to her co-worker in the hall. “Hang on, we’re coming!”

In the laboratory, they met again with a proud Louise as her scientists showed them the features of Illyria’s new mechanical body. It stood unaided, looking eerily like a crash test dummy or department store mannequin, faceless and skinless and bald as an egg. Its artificial jaw had no lips and its artificial eyes no lids; the gelatinous eyeball surfaces had yet to be installed, and tiny twin cameras sat exposed in the gaping sockets.

“It’ll be a perfect fit!” Willow cheered. “And once we get it decorated, you won’t be able to tell the difference between IllyriaBot and IllyriaFred, right, Fred? …Fred?”

Fred didn’t answer. Her eyes were shut and her head lowered, and her mouth was moving silently. She seemed to be having a conversation with herself, grimacing and scowling one moment and earnest and beguiling the next. Faint streaks of blue faded in and out across her skin.

Then, suddenly, the bluish tint vanished completely and she was herself again.

“I think I’ve talked her into it. She says she’s willing to give it a try.”

“Illyria? She’s here?” Angel asked.

“Uh-huh. Hang on a sec.”

Then Fred was gone and Illyria stood in her place, looking imperious. She eyed the robot suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” Oz assured her. “I know it looks all Metropolis Maschinenmensch Maria right now, but wait ‘til you try it on.”

Slowly, deliberately, Illyria walked all around the robot. “The Burkle claims that because this is a machine rather than a living organism, I will be able to enter and exit it at will. Is that correct?”

“That’s right,” Willow said, “You’ll have your own little doggy door, and when you want to go astral cruisin’ -- which, hey, I don’t blame you; I’m an a-plane surfer myself -- you can just park it in the corner. Only don’t leave it laying around in public, ‘cause the police would probably haul it off.”

Illyria stared at her without saying anything, until Willow began to squirm uncomfortably. Finally she blurted, “So go on, hop in and take it for a spin around the block!”

The Old One turned her gaze to the robot once more. She cocked her head to one side; ran her hand over a ventilation screen at its waistline. Then in the blink of an eye, the alien color and haughty demeanor disappeared, and gentle Fred was back.

“My goodness,” said Louise happily, “It’s just like watchin’ The Three Faces of Eve, ain’t it?”

Circuitry lights inside the transparent shell of the ‘bot began to glow and wink, and several of the gauges detected a slight rise in temperature. A pleasant technician studying the monitors gave Louise the thumbs-up gesture. “She’s loading her brainwave data into the unit successfully. It shouldn’t be much longer before we see physical movement.”

Harmony, who had lingered at the edge of the group and taken a seat next to Thu, smiled at the young girl in a friendly manner. Thu smiled back. “I love your outfit,” she whispered.

“Why, thank you!” Harm replied. “Aren’t you the cutest thing! Are you here on a Career Day assignment or something?”

“No, I’m a slayer. Career Days blow.”

“God, tell me about it. Like some old guy with a comb-over would know what kind of job I’d be good at.”

Thu nodded. “Really.”

They watched the robot in comfortable silence for a few moments. Then as their respective identities simultaneously dawned on them, they suddenly glanced warily at each other and inched their chairs farther apart.

The ‘bot’s mouth opened. Its synthetic tongue made a tentative, exploratory motion that reminded its audience horribly of a garden slug. And then from the orifice, through intricate speakers embedded in the roof of its mouth, they heard the voice of Illyria.

“This…may…do.”

***************************************

She was clumsy at first, staggering a little and moving her hands and fingers as if they were cursed with arthritis. She took a few halting steps, overbalanced, and toppled forward, but when Angel caught her arm to steady her she shook him off. Her eye cameras turned slightly in their sockets and fixed on him. “I do this on my own,” she said -- slowly, but with menace in her new mechanical voice.

“Fine,” Angel huffed, and stepped back. He found himself itching to poke those creepy little cameras out with his fingers and see how she liked it.

She continued to experiment with body movement, swinging her robotic arms, grasping objects, stepping heel to toe. Within half an hour, she’d gotten the hang of it, and was marching confidently around the room. “I want to lift something now,” she announced. “And then I want to break it and throw it.”

“Don’t look at me, C-3PO,” Spike snorted.

“I can take her to my home dimension for a couple of hours,” Paloma offered. “There’s all kinds of rocks and shit she could bust up without bothering anybody.”

“Well, that’s awful sweet of you! I’ll have to round up a non-human tech to send with y’all, though, on account of that poisonous air there. Our little lungs couldn’t handle it.” Louise winked and picked up a phone to find the proper personnel.

“I think I’ll go along, too,” Angel said. His own little lungs, he knew, would be quite safe. There was no telling how exuberant Illyria might get with her rock-throwing.

“And I think I’ll just stay right here. I’ve sort of missed L.A. – well, small parts of it – believe I’ll wander about and do some revisiting.” Spike pulled several wadded, rumpled bills of U.S. currency from his pocket and began calculating how far in the city they would take him.

“The sun’s still up,” Oz reminded him.

“Uh. Right. Well, it’s a good job that there’s still miles of underground and assorted tunnels all over. Any of you gents and ladies want to meet up with me somewhere accessible?”

He flashed at them all the charming, slightly wicked smile that Buffy remembered so well from the time before his soul…the time when that smile was aimed at her and her alone, daring her to give in to carnal urges and join him in the dark; the concealing, blessed dark…

“Oh, can I go, too? Could I take the rest of the day off, Ms. Albright? These are all my old friends and I haven’t seen them in soooooo long!” Harmony jumped up and down and clutched at Gunn’s arm and batted her eyelashes at Lady Louise imploringly. “Please, please, please, please, please…”

“Lord, yes. Go, scat, clear outta here.” Louise waved Harmony away. “And you behave yourself out there, y’hear? Don’t make Louise have to come after you.”

“You’re the best boss ever!” Harmony cheered. Then she turned to Angel. “Oh, you were okay, too.”

Angel rolled his eyes.

*************************************

The clacking of Harmony’s high heels echoed like ticks of a clock in the rounded hollow of the tall, brick-lined tunnel. She clutched her handbag tightly and tried not to complain about the loss of the Wolfram & Hart necro-tinted cars. “This is fun,” she chirped at Spike, a step or two ahead of her. “I’ve been working really hard on being good lately. There’s so much to remember, of course, and I have to keep post-it notes all over the place to remind me what’s bad and what’s not. Like, I’ll be right in the middle of drinking someone, and then I’ll notice the scrunchie I put around my wrist to remind me not to do that, and I’ll apologize and let them go. Once I even called an ambulance for one of them! He kept pointing at me and moaning to the paramedic, but everyone thought I’d just found him that way.”

“Thought you said you hadn’t eaten anyone in a while.”

“I haven’t! Not to death. Just to weak and woozy.” She lengthened her stride and caught up with him. “By the way, is Gunn seeing anybody?”

Spike raised an eyebrow and looked over at her. “Not that I know of. What, do you fancy our Charlie Boy now?”

“Maybe,” Harmony said loftily. Then her voice became eager. “We totally bonded when he was in the hospital. You know, when Wes went all stabbity on him after Fred…oh my god, this is so amazing! We’re, like, dating each other’s exes!”

“You haven’t landed a date with him yet, Ducks. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, yeah?”

“This could count as a date. A group date.”

Spike sighed and shook his head in defeat. “If you say so.”

He walked on a few more paces, and looked thoughtful. His steps slowed. Then, suddenly, he stopped. Something that had been eating at his conscience for quite a long time surfaced, and he spoke.

“I owe you an apology, Harm. Shouldn’t have treated you the way I did the day I got my body back. I was an arse and a bastard to you, and I’m sorry.”

Harmony stared at him, well and truly floored. “Really?” The memory of that insulting incident rushed over her, and for a few seconds she almost got mad at him again. “Wow,” she murmured. “You never told me you were sorry about anything before. Ever. Not even that time you staked me.” She continued to gaze at him, and a little happy smile appeared on her lips. “This is…this is really special.” She hesitated; then: “Do you think maybe we could...”

“No.” Spike was firmly, completely adamant. “You’re a nice girl, in a manner of speaking, and I apologize for all the times I made you unhappy, but there is no way in hell that you and I will ever get back together again.”

“Oh, I figured that,” Harmony replied. “I meant do you think Charles and Fred would be interested in a four-way?”

******************************************

Louise walked softly, slowly around the white room. She trailed her fingers across its walls; the walls that sometimes held, and sometimes receded back into infinity. The silence here too was infinite. Louise closed her eyes and listened to the silence. Then she opened them, and whispered.

“You’re in here, aren’t you? Left behind, or escaped, and hiding and waiting to see if it’s safe to come out.”

She looked slowly, quietly over her shoulder. “I’ve been feelin’ you ever since they first came here. You feel them, too. I can tell. There’s not much anyone can hide from Lady Louise.”

She put out a hand and touched the soul of the former watcher.

“Not much at all.”