Thaw. 5

Part V

Angel watched Cordelia’s face change into a mixture of surprise and delight. “Doyle?” she gasped.

The Irishman at the bar — Doyle, apparently — smiled. “Don’t tell me we’ve been introduced,” he said. “I was hoping to make a good first impression for once, and now it looks like I blew that one already.”

To Angel’s astonishment, Cordelia stepped forward and kissed Doyle hard. Then she stared at him for a moment before kissing him again. “Come on!” she said. “Hand ’em over!”

“You can have whatever you want, darlin’, seeing as how we’re hitting it off so well.”

“I thought she was in love with you,” Wesley said to Angel.
“I thought so too,” Angel replied. Absurdly, he found himself feeling jealous of this Doyle.

Cordelia smacked Doyle on the arm. “Don’t get big ideas, Mister I-never-ask-girls-out-because-I’m-all-shy-about-being-half-demon. You blew your chance. But I need the visions, Doyle. Give them to me. I’m ready. I’m past ready.” She kissed Doyle one more time, but this time Doyle appeared to be too surprised to much enjoy the experience.

“How’d you know about the part-demon thing?” Doyle said. “Did I go green and not notice?”

“You’re as smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Lorne assured him. “But not as smooth as this lady here.” He smirked at Cordelia. “Boy, you don’t waste any time, do you?”

“I’m in love with Angel,” Cordelia said. “I wasn’t ever in love with Doyle, though I did go through a phase where I found him really attractive, despite the shirts.”

“What’s wrong with my shirt?” Doyle protested.

Angel took in the gold-and-orange polyester check. “Everything,” he said. Why did it feel good to score a point off somebody he didn’t know?

Because that somebody was kissing Cordelia. Angel didn’t truly feel anything for her, he told himself — but the world she represented, a world where he had purpose and meaning, was already something he was desperate to claim.

Then he saw Cordelia smiling at his joke, her dark eyes shining with love; against his will, Angel felt a shiver of longing for her — just for her to keep smiling at him, just that way.

“So you’re not in love with Doyle,” Wesley said, as maddeningly analytical as ever. “Obviously you’re not overtaken by any sort of overwhelming magnetism –“

“Hey!” Doyle scowled at Wesley. “Stranger things have happened. Not many and not often, I grant you, but now and again.”

“– so what on earth are you doing?” Wesley finished. Angel was glad the question had been asked for him.

“She’s trying to get the visions,” Lorne said.

“You understand what’s going on?” Angel said.

“Hell, no, sweetpea,” Lorne said. “I’m as confused as you are, and that takes some doing. But the star of the small screen did just say she needed the visions, if I heard correctly.”

“My visions?” Doyle said. “My greeting cards from the future, courtesy of the Powers That Be?” There was that phrase again.

“In the reality I remember, they were my visions,” Cordelia said. “After you gave them to me. After –” Her voice trailed off.

Angel tried to put all this together. “You mean you had visions — you had powers? You could see the future?”

Wesley looked rather piqued. “You never told us that.”

“Excuse me, but I was already sounding crazy!” Cordelia protested. “Saying, and oh, by the way, I was a psychic too — well, it didn’t seem like it was going to help my chances.”

Doyle’s face went ashen; though Angel had only just met the man, he sensed immediately that something was seriously wrong. “What is it?” Angel said. “If it’s about the ‘different reality’ stuff, we can explain.”

“I’m already getting that picture,” Doyle said. He took a deep drink of his Guinness and slumped back on the bar. “It’s just that there’s only one way to give up the visions. It involves kissing somebody –“

“Right, right, we got that,” Angel said, trying to brush past the subject.

“– as I was saying, kissing somebody right before you die.”

Cordelia nodded slowly. “I should have figured that out,” she said. “That dying was the trigger, not just kissing. That explains a lot.”

Angel pieced it together and stared at Doyle. “You mean — in the other reality — you’re dead.”

“You went out like a hero,” Cordelia said. Her eyes were damp with unshed tears. “If that helps. You saved a whole lot of men and women and children, not to mention Angel and me.”

“It helps some,” Doyle said. He was wary now, and Angel couldn’t blame him. “What helps more is the fact that I’m alive in this reality right here.”

The reality we’re trying to change, Angel realized. If we get back to the world Cordelia remembers — this world that sounds like every dream I’ve ever had, slightly bent — then we’re going to kill this man. Cordelia had realized it too, he could see; the hands she lifted to her face were shaking. Angel grasped her arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze; he didn’t miss the dark look Wesley gave him as he did so.

“What really, really bites,” Doyle continued, “is the fact that I’m supposed to help you do what you’re after, which I suspect ends up with a tombstone for yours truly.”

“Wait,” Angel said. “You know this, and you want to help us?”

“‘Want to’ might be putting it a bit strongly,” Doyle said. “Way the hell too strongly, as a matter of fact. But I had a vision of the three of you, just like this. I know you’re headed into serious danger. And I know it’s my job to help you do whatever it is you decide to do. Helluva thing to do to a man, asking him to sign his own death warrant. But the Powers aren’t what you’d call fair.” He drained the rest of his Guinness in one great draught.

“No,” Cordelia said flatly. “They’re not fair. I’m starting to think they’re complete bastards, if you want to know the truth.”

Wesley said, “You mean, even if the steps we take now — about which, incidentally, we have not the slightest clue — lead to the destruction of this reality and the restoration of the old one, you’ll help us? Even though it means your own death?”

“You can’t defy the Powers.” It was Cordelia who answered him, her face set. For a moment, she looked far older and more formidable than Angel had ever thought her to be. “If you do, they make you pay. I’m the proof of that.”

“Damn, look at you,” Doyle said. “White like a ghost, shaking like a leaf. And you’re not the one who’s supposed to be dying. What in the name of Christ and his Apostles did they do to YOU?”

“They stole my memory,” Cordelia said. “And because my memory was gone, I ended up erasing my whole world. Our whole world.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Angel said, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel. “We’ll figure out the right thing to do, and how to do it. We just need time to figure it out, that’s all. But — hey — we’ve got Wesley’s Watcher training, and Doyle’s visions, and Lorne’s power — whatever that is — and we have you. Your memories of before. All that’s got to add up to something, right?”

“And we have you,” Cordelia said. “Don’t leave yourself out.”

Wesley stepped between them, not-so-subtly separating Angel and Cordelia. “Suffice it to say, we now know our situation. We have a group of people with various skills that may be useful. No matter how fearsome the situation may appear, it would seem that things are only going to get better.”

At that moment, someone fired a bazooka into the room.

Angel tackled Wesley and Cordelia, bearing them down to the floor with superhuman speed. Doyle and Lorne hit the ground a split-second later, just as the bazooka exploded into the stage. A flash of heat seared Angel’s skin as shreds of wood and metal ripped through the air. He felt something spear him in the back — nothing big, nothing fatal — and tugged Cordelia closer to him, to shelter her better.

Demons and humans alike were screaming and running. At least one of the vampires was on fire; Angel saw it wavering on its feet, stumbling toward the exit, before it crumpled into a pile of ash. A furry demon bolted toward the back door, then was hit by a spray of bullets from an automatic gun. It collapsed, dead or dying.

Lorne gasped, “Remember that stuff I saw in your mind, Cordelia? The stuff about the club getting shot up? I knew we should’ve talked about that earlier.”

“Cordelia?” Angel said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Not exactly,” she said, coughing from the smoke. “But I have an idea — and if my idea is right –“

“What?” Doyle said.

To Angel’s astonishment, Cordelia smiled. “Then this really is about to get better.”

“Attention, ladies and gentlemen and ugly undead creatures of the night!” A young man strode into the smoldering club, a swagger in his step. He had a black cloth tied around his head, a long black coat not unlike one of Angel’s own. And he had a large machine gun cradled in his hands. “The name is Charles Gunn. And we’re about to get a few things sorted out.”

***

Riley had been trained as a commando, and he knew how to be still. Not still the way most people are still, but absolutely free of movement. He could breathe so shallowly that his chest didn’t rise or fall, could lock his muscles into complete immobility yet be ready to strike again in an instant. He’d had plenty of training, plenty of practice. The past three years, he’d perfected his technique while stalking demons of every variety through the streets of Sunnydale.

Right now, he was using it in the heart of Initiative headquarters, against his own people. Riley hadn’t expected to ever do that, but he was getting a lot better at adapting.

The guards turned the corner, giving him approximately one minute, forty-five seconds before the next team wound come into sight. Riley swung down from the ceiling, checked to make sure that the missing tile was invisible in the shadows. Quickly and silently, he went to the door of 941 and punched in the code. It would mark him as the one who’d done this, later on. But later on, he hoped, it wouldn’t matter.

As the door slid shut silently behind him, Riley could hear the motion from the cot. They were in total darkness, so he couldn’t see her face. He didn’t know if slayer abilities let her see his, but just in case, he quietly said, “Faith, it’s me.”

“I figured that,” she said quietly. “They did all their sleep-deprivation experiments on me years ago. I wasn’t guessing they had any left to do. Anyway, I knew you’d visit me some night or another.”

“You did?” Riley had thought Faith took him for a straight-arrow Initiative soldier. He hoped everyone did. If he wasn’t fooling people, they might be in more trouble than he’d thought.

“Sure,” Faith said. He could hear the tension in her voice. “You don’t get something for nothing in this world. I know that. You’ve been nice to me, Lee. You get me the quality snacks, don’t let ’em do too many really scary tests to me in a row. So I guess it’s my turn to be nice to you, huh?”

In his shock, Riley couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew his face must be a mask of pure astonishment and dismay, but apparently Faith couldn’t see him after all. As her covers rustled — apparently being pulled back — she continued, “I don’t mind. Hell, it’s been long enough since I got laid, and for a white-bread Iowa guy, you look pretty good. Just promise me I get something outta this, okay? We’ll do whatever you want, but I’d like to at least get off with something besides my right hand for a change.”

“Whoa,” Riley said. “Stop right there. Faith — that’s not what I — how could you think I’d force you to –“

“Ain’t rape if I say yes,” Faith said. “Don’t act all innocent with me, Lee. You came here to fuck me. I’ll let you. Let’s leave the sweet talk and lies out of it, okay? I’m in a cage and you keep me here, so this ain’t gonna be that romantic, even if you do bring me extra applesauce tomorrow.”

“I’m not trying to be — Faith — you don’t understand.” He was too surprised — and, against his will, too aroused — to think straight. He told himself, focus, dammit.

“What don’t I understand?” He heard her stand up, the soft padding of her bare feet against the concrete floor. Riley gasped as her hands went to his belt buckle; she didn’t unfasten it, but she pulled him forward slightly, pelvis first. “You want to play all noble, pretend this is spontaneous?” Her face wasn’t far from his now; he could feel the faint brush of her breath against his skin. “Won’t work, Lee. I know you want to fuck me.”

Her attitude had gone just about far enough. Riley pulled back just enough to tug his belt free from her hands. “Of COURSE I want to fuck you,” Riley said. “You’re beautiful, and you’re sexy, and you give me hell, which I happen to like in a woman, unfortunately for me. I’d have to be CRAZY not to want to fuck you, and somehow, the Initiative hasn’t driven me crazy just yet. However, whether you believe it or not, not even you are hot enough to make me stoop to using a woman who hasn’t got a choice in the matter. Or to make me stop thinking about subjects besides what’s between your legs, because I actually have more important things on my mind. Are you still with me?”

“Oh. Um. Yeah.” Faith sounded surprised. “Shit, Lee, I’m sorry.”

“Save it. We’ll talk about it some other time,” Riley said. “And some other place.”

He heard Faith draw in a breath. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, there’s big trouble here.”

“Define big,” Faith said.

“Opening up a gate to hell would be the definition of big.”

“What?” Faith’s voice was a little too loud; Riley put his hand out to cover her mouth. His fingers found her lips in the dark, and he tried hard to ignore the jolt he felt. She whispered, her lips moving softly against his palm. “This the bitch-queen’s latest project?”

“It’s Adam’s latest project,” Riley replied. “Adam and some demon who waltzed in here today. There’s more to it — something about shifting realities, and cementing one reality, and blood –“

“That all sounds real encouraging.” Faith shifted her weight slightly; Riley knew without seeing it that she was subconsciously getting ready for action. “What are we gonna do about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that all day. And I realized — in here, there’s nothing we can do.”

“You woke me up and got me all excited about potential sexage just to tell me this? Hell, Lee, next time, wait until morning.”

She was excited? Riley pushed the thought aside. “We need help,” he said. “We need to find Buffy Summers, and whoever else is helping her now. You and I can’t do anything about this from inside. That means we have to get out and get help.”

“Get out. You mean — escape.”

Riley let his hand brush against the side of her face for a moment before pulling it away. “I know the risks. But we both know we were going to have to try this someday. I think today’s the day.”

Faith’s voice shook as she answered. “Lee — when I tried it before — they always got me. Always. And they used those things on me — those things that shock — I talk like a bad-ass, I mean, I AM a bad-ass, but them holding me down and shocking me ’til I scream and piss myself and pass out — I can’t take that again.”

He knew what it cost her to show fear and longed to draw her close. If she hadn’t taunted him about his desire, he would have. “When you tried to break out before, you were alone. You won’t be this time. I know this place, Faith. I’ve got the security codes, the clearance, everything. I think we can get out, if we go now.”

She was quiet for another couple of moments. Then she said, “What the hell.”

***

Cordelia tried very hard not to laugh. Gunn was doing his best gangsta routine, street attitude and weirdo black head kerchief — who told him that the kerchief look was tough instead of dopey? But she knew him, and because she knew him, she knew this raid was going to go a lot differently than the one she remembered from the past reality.

Of course, it didn’t look very different right now —

“Ain’t got no problem with any humans in the room,” Gunn said. He was pacing the perimeter of the room, glaring at the cowering people and non-people on the floor. “You got zero scales, zero horns and a normal pulse, take yourself on outta here right now.”

Doyle muttered, “I haven’t got any scales or horns at the moment. You figure I’m clear?”

“Just hang on,” Cordelia said. “Let me handle this.” She saw Angel’s face shift from surprise to disapproval and fear as she stood up, but she wasn’t afraid. It was just Gunn, after all. She knew that even if they didn’t — even if Gunn didn’t.

“That’s right,” said a member of Gunn’s gang. “Get your human-hottie self on outta here.”

“Charles?” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Gunn glared at her. “I think I’m conducting a raid on a demon hideout,” he said. “Just what do you think you’re doing? Playing like my second-grade teacher?”

She grinned despite herself. “Mrs. Mills, right? The one who totally abandoned the lesson plans and read ‘Bluebeard’ to a group of impressionable eight-year-olds?”

“What the — how the hell did you know that?”

“I know a lot about you,” Cordelia said, stepping closer to him. With that closed-off, grim look on his face wiped away by astonishment, Gunn looked more like himself. She felt the tension already lifting from her. “It’s a really long story, but I know you. I’ve fought demons and vampires with you. I’ve also been to see ‘Lord of the Rings’ with you. Three times, which I only consented to because Viggo is so hot, NOT because I am turning into some kind of fan-geek.”

“You mind explaining how we did all this, and I don’t even know you?” Gunn backed up a couple of steps, reestablishing the distance between them.

“You do know me,” Cordelia said quietly. Over Gunn’s shoulder, she could see a few demons taking advantage of the distraction to sneak out. Despite her increasing confidence that the situation was about to be defused, Cordelia didn’t say or do anything to stop them. “You don’t know that you do, but you do.”

“Wait a second — ” Gunn squinted his eyes as he peered at her. “You’re that girl on TV. The show that’s on right after ‘Will and Grace,’ right?”

“Not from THAT.” She already hated the very fact and existence of “Cordy!” “If I explained it just point-blank, it would sound really crazy –“

“No, surely not,” Lorne said dryly from his place on the floor. Doyle stifled a laugh. Cordelia pretended not to hear them. Gunn needed to be calmed down and convinced, and she was sure she could do both.

“Hear me out, okay?” Cordelia held out her hands. “You had it tough growing up. Your parents took off pretty early on, and there wasn’t anyone but you and your sister Alonna.” Gunn’s eyes darkened, and Cordelia realized something this reality had in common with her own. “You lost her to vampires, and you blame yourself for not taking care of her. But you take care of so many other people — you’re not happy unless you’ve got somebody to look after. For a long time it was your gang, and then it became your friends.”

Gunn shook his head slowly in wonder. “You’re in my head.”

“You used to be pretty good at getting into mine, too,” she said gently. “We’re friends, whether you remember me or not. And I can help you, if you’ll let me. But you’re not getting anywhere with this. You’re just hurting and scaring people. Not everything in this bar is evil, you know? Stop fighting the world so hard. Just — listen, okay? Listen to someone who knows you. I know you.”

He studied her face, and she could see the Charles she knew flickering just beneath the surface of that face. All his intelligence, his friendliness, his compassion — it was all still in there, buried down deep, but she could get to it. Maybe she already had.

Then Gunn shouldered his weapon and pointed it straight at her.

She gasped. “What are you doing?”

“You’re in my head,” he repeated. “You’re not normal — not anything human. You’re here to confuse me, to stop me from carrying out my mission. Well, you ain’t gonna stop me.”

Her body went cold as he went for the trigger — oh, God, she’d been so wrong —

“Wait!” Angel was on his feet in a flash, standing between her and Gunn. “Don’t do this.”

Cordelia pulled at Angel’s arm. Desperately she whispered, “What are you doing? He’ll kill you!”

“He won’t kill you,” Angel murmured. “I won’t let him.”

“Don’t do what, vamp?” Gunn sounded surer of himself now. “You ain’t reflecting in the mirror over there, so I know what you are.”

“Yeah, well, I know what you are,” Angel said. “You’re a kid who’s too scared of the shadows in the dark to do anything but lash out at them.”

“Are you in my head too?”

“Nope,” Angel said. “I don’t know a damn thing about who you are. But I know what you’re about to become, and I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“A killer, you mean,” Gunn said. “I been killing for a while now.”

“I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of stuff out there that needs killing.”

“Including you,” Gunn retorted.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Angel said. “Another way of looking at it is — you were just about to kill a human being, a woman who didn’t do anything to you but offer friendship.”

“Girl knows all KINDS of freaky stuff –“

“She knows it about me too,” Angel said. “And about some of these guys down on the floor.” Wesley waved somewhat weakly. “She hasn’t done anything to hurt any of us. She’s trying to help us all, including you — even though you came in here with a bazooka and a bunch of hotheads who are too busy looking for a fight to look at anything else.”

“Hey.” One of the gang members came closer to Gunn. “You gonna let him say this shit to you?”

“Shut up,” Gunn said. He was studying Angel’s face a lot more intently than he’d ever looked at Cordelia’s. She had to fight the urge to throw herself in front of Angel, or at least to tow him down to the ground, out of harm’s way.

Angel continued, “Cordelia says you lost a sister, and you feel like it’s your fault.” Gunn gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I lost a sister too, and it was my fault. I know what it’s like to carry that guilt around all the time. But you can’t let it force you into doing things worse than what you’re making up for in the first place.”

“Just what is it you think I’m gonna do?” Gunn’s voice was tense.

One of Angel’s hands reached back and wrapped around Cordelia’s. She realized with a jolt of panic that he thought there was a good chance Gunn would strike after what he said next; there was nothing for her to do but squeeze his hand back. Angel finally replied, “I think you’re gonna do what your sister would want you to do.”

Gunn made a small sound in the back of his throat. He remained tense, at the ready, for another moment — and then he let the weapon drop.

Cordelia let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. From the floor, she heard Wesley murmur, “Remarkable.”

The other gang members didn’t think so. “Hell, dog, what’re you doing?”

“Y’all get,” Gunn said. When they remained motionless, Gunn pointed his weapon at the one closest to him. “Just get outta here. We gonna talk about this some other time, you hear me?”

“This is bullshit,” another gang member said. “You ain’t stopped nothing. We’ll be back.” They all began to file out, and the various humans and demons on the floor began to sigh, stretch and groan as they got to their feet.

Cordelia looked up at Angel, almost unable to contain her welling pride. “There you are.” Angel raised an eyebrow. “The guy I fell in love with.”

Angel looked away for a moment, embarrassed and uneasy. Then he said, “He sounds like a good guy. I wish — I wish I were more like him. In this reality.”

“It’s you,” she said. “It’s all you. Believe it.”

“I wish I could,” he whispered.

“You can,” she said, smiling up at him. “I do.”

Doyle got to his knees. “I think we all deserve a free pint on the house, don’t you?”

Gunn still looked as though he might snap, but he nodded slowly. “Now that guy — HE makes sense.”

“A round for everyone,” Lorne agreed. “If we weren’t friends before, we will be after a couple of beers.”

Cordelia thought, I couldn’t talk to Gunn, but Angel could. She began thinking about what that meant, about the way she’d seen all the people around her, and her stomach twisted uncomfortable. She put one trembling hand to her lips. She’d thought it would so easy, but —

Angel, perhaps concerned by her silence, touched her shoulder as he smiled gently. “Were these guys just as crazy in the other reality?”

She shook her head. “They were a WHOLE lot worse.”

Part 6

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *