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Chapter Nine (b)
"Folks, we had extended hours tonight 'cause of the shakeup and all -- people do like to knock 'em back after one of those," the bouncer said. "But it's almost breakfast, and it's about time you went on home."
"We'd love to," Lorne said, "but truth be told, we don't actually have anyplace to go. Know any nice motels in the vicinity? That don't charge more than -- oh, what have I got here -- $13.76 and 5 Pylean yuctaba?"
Angel sighed and started searching his own wallet; he'd have to send Fred out to the car to grab his blanket so he could make a run for it. He didn't want to leave; he wanted to lie down -- on the floor, if he had to -- shut his eyes and give in to exhaustion. He'd felt the sun come up a few hours ago, and after two straight days awake, the impulse to sleep was almost overwhelming.
Fred, for her part, looked as exhausted as he felt. Since their conversation, she'd avoided being as close to him as before -- she didn't seem angry or resentful, just slightly awkward. Lorne, in an unusual display of subtlety, sat between them and steered the talk to neutral topics, like margaritas, the Dixie Chicks and the impending apocalypse.
Just as Angel fished out a couple of twenties to add to the kitty, the bouncer sighed. "I shouldn't be doing this," he said, "but I can't just go tossing a green man out on the street. There's a spare room in back with a cot for the lady, if you want it. That still puts you boys on the floor, but -- "
"We'll take it," Lorne said. "You are a man of uncommon decency, not to mention credulity."
The bouncer didn't look as if he understood the last word, but he also didn't seem to care much. "Hell, after that last shakeup, it's not like there's anything left worth stealing. We'll be back around 2 p.m. for cleanup duty. Maybe you guys can pitch in, huh?"
"Our pleasure and privilege," Lorne said. "Take care, amigo."
As the bouncer shooed the last couple of customers out the door, Fred said, "He's being very nice."
"He has a good heart and a soft head," Lorne said, not unkindly. "Both of which work to our advantage."
Although not, apparently, to the advantage of the people who had just arrived at the door, and were trying to get in. The bouncer was shaking his head as he tried to close the door on them. "At this hour?" Angel muttered. "It's, what, eight a.m.?"
"Never underestimate the human capacity for alcohol," Lorne said.
Then Angel's sharp ears caught the voices at the door.
"We were looking for our friends -- one of them might appear a bit, ah, unusual --" Wesley?
"He's green, okay? You MUST have noticed the green guy." That had to be Cordelia.
Angel stood up even as the bouncer, shaking his head, let the others in. Wesley and Cordelia were in the lead, followed by Gunn and -- he blinked in surprise -- Darla?
"Look at what we have here," Lorne said. "I just know the story behind this is really rich, and I'm looking forward to hearing it, because the only reason you guys showed up here is to tell us that we have a way home. Right?"
"Sorry, but no," Wesley said. At first, he hadn't met Angel's eyes -- but now he brought his head up, looked him in the face. "We found out what happened in this universe. Why Angelus has done the things he's done."
Angel found it hard to look away from Darla; she was close enough now that he could catch her scent. Unquestionably human; unquestionably very sick. She was staring back at him, searching his face for something -- what, he couldn't begin to guess. "It wasn't Darla," he said, repeating only what he already knew.
"You remember last year, when our offices got bombed and I got the visions and stuff?" Cordelia said. "Well, okay, of course you remember that. But --"
"Wesley died, didn't he?" Angel said. "And then he couldn't translate the scroll to save you. But -- your eyes --"
"Did that myself," Cordelia said. She rocked back and forth on her heels, twisting her hands together as she spoke. "How scary a week are we having that this news comes as a relief?"
"Of course," Angel said. "Of course." It all made sense now -- he would have seen it before, if only he hadn't been too wrapped up in his own fears and concerns to see it. How well he remembered that long, black night when it seemed he would lose them both -- the quick, unwelcome thrill of vengeance as he'd killed Vocah, sliced off Lindsey's hand. He had been so frightened, so guilty, so desperate -- and beneath it all, twisted up by the terrible wish not to care.
Angel shook his head and looked again at his friends. "And that changes things?"
"I think perhaps it does," Wesley said. "We've interpreted so much of what Angelus is doing -- of what you did in the past -- as pure evil. And it wasn't that at all. The truth is more complex."
Lorne said, "Hate to interrupt this very special episode, but I was just wondering -- how is it that Angelus attempting to destroy the world isn't pure evil? Because it sure seems close enough for jazz."
"Turns out Angelus ain't trying to destroy the world after all," Gunn said. "He's trying to save it, though why he's picking off my gang to do it --"
"Of course," Angel repeated. "He has to kill them to take the livers for the sacrifice. And he chooses people who don't have families or jobs -- the people he thinks no one will miss."
"He's wrong about that," Gunn said.
"I know. He knows it, too. But he'll tell himself anything to make it easier," Angel said.
"Wait a second," Fred said. "Angelus is trying to save the world? He's interfering with the breakup of this reality?"
"That's right, little girl." Darla's voice was a rasp, and she was steadying herself on a nearby chair, gripping it with white knuckles. Angel realized she was almost ready to fall down. "Angelus is quite certain he can keep us all alive forever."
"Perhaps that's for the best," Wesley said. "These people can survive, instead of perishing."
"My people gettin' killed is for the best?" Gunn protested.
"What's done is done," Wesley said. "We can't take it back."
Angel sensed an argument brewing and was quietly glad, for once, to be out of it. He stepped forward and took Darla's arm in his hand; she flinched, but didn't pull away. Gently, Angel guided her to sit in the chair. He pretended not to see Cordelia's look of displeasure.
"That last reality quake -- that should have been it. That should have been the end," Fred said. "But Angelus stabilized it. He turned it back. Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad."
"We need the world to end in order to get home," Angel explained. "We need reality to break down completely."
"Let me get this straight," Gunn said. "The apocalypse is coming, Angelus is trying to stop it, and we want it to happen? Anybody want to take a shot at what's wrong with that picture?"
"Can he stop it?" Cordelia asked. "I mean, I thought this universe was on the skids pretty much no matter what. He's only buying time, right?"
"I don't think so," Darla said. "Angelus doesn't think so either. He thinks he can stop this forever."
"Oh, no," Fred said. "Oh -- I need napkins."
The others stared at Fred a bit, but Lorne hurried over to get her some more paper for calculations.
"I can't help but notice this is a bar," Darla said. She smiled at Angel. "How about a drink for old times' sake? Or don't you and I have any old times?"
"We do," Angel said. "But I won't get you a drink. I'll get you a glass of water. You look like you could use it."
Darla laughed, a dry, cracked sound. "I'm not exactly worried about my liver, you know."
Angel went behind the bar, took out a plastic cup and found the nozzle for water. To his surprise, Wesley followed him. As Angel filled up the cup, he said quietly, "Thanks."
Wesley genuinely seemed surprised. "For what?"
"For giving me another chance."
"You gave me one, once," Wesley said. "When we met, I treated you like an animal to be caged. When we met again in Los Angeles, I threatened you. But you gave me assistance and work and friendship when very few others would have. I'd never have found another life that would have suited me so well as what we're doing now, and I'd never have found that, but for you. You gave me the chance."
Angel stared at Wesley for a moment; he hadn't thought of the early days of their friendship in so long, it was surprising to remember. "You deserved it."
"And so do you. Come on, let's get your demonic sire her water."
Fred was huddled in a corner now, writing out more scribbles on her napkins. Lorne and Gunn sat near her, staring down at the markings in futile hopes of understanding. As Angel approached Darla, Wesley took Cordelia's hand and drew her aside, toward Fred. Cordelia opened her mouth to protest -- then, to Angel's surprise, shut it again and walked away.
Angel sat down opposite Darla and handed her the cup. "This will make you feel better."
"I doubt it. The only thing that will make me feel better is death," she said, but she accepted the water.
He watched her drink, noting the tiny grimace of pain she tried to hide with every swallow. Her face was bare of makeup, and her hair simply hung around it, uncombed. In two hundred and fifty years, Angel could count the occasions he had seen her like this on the fingers of one hand.
"You were so afraid to die, when you first came back. You pleaded with me to make you a vampire."
"I pleaded with you -- him -- to make me a vampire here, too," she said. "And you know how well I can beg, don't you, darling boy? I used to ask so sweetly, and you did whatever I wanted." It was true, he knew -- and once, she would have used those memories to mock him. Now she only sounded tired and sad. "But this one thing, you wouldn't give me. You thought it was better to die a human than go on as a vampire. And finally, I believe you."
"Where I come from, you were denied that," Angel said. "It was Drusilla. She turned you right in front of me."
"Oh, my love." Her hand against his cheek was bony, covered in rough, cracked skin. "And that other Darla -- she's a vampire again?"
He nodded.
She smiled. "And does she hound you without mercy?"
"Not lately. But she will again."
"Don't let her," Darla said.
"What?"
"I want to die," Darla said, more firmly than she'd said anything else. "I want to die a true death. As a human. The way it should have been. I don't want vampirism or magic spells or alternate universes to keep dragging my life out, so very far past the point when it ought to have ended. I used to think you could never have enough existence, but you can. I'm old enough. I've seen enough. I understand now, Angelus." She looked at him. "Or should I call you Angel?"
"Angel." He covered her rough little hand with his own. "The end is coming. We're going to stop him, I promise you. You'll be able to die. You'll be able to rest, at last."
"And that other me -- you'll take care of her, too?"
He stared at her; she wasn't pleading for him to go back to the "true" Darla for a renewal of their partnership or love affair. Darla was asking him to let her die -- in every universe. She was asking him to stake the Darla he knew and end her unnatural life forever.
"I will," he said. "I promise you. Every version of you will be at rest."
Darla sank against the back of the chair and smiled at him -- a warm, genuine smile the likes of which he'd never glimpsed on her face. Despite her sickness, she suddenly looked as beautiful as he had ever seen her. "Thank you." She laughed weakly. "It's so funny."
"What is?"
"That he was the one I wanted," she said. "That you were the one I cast away."
***
"Cordelia, you're staring again."
"I'm trying to lip read."
"It might actually be less rude if you simply interrupted them and asked them what they're talking about."
Cordelia abandoned her attempts to follow Angel and Darla's conversation from half way across the room, and looked at Wesley. "When Angel gets in the Darla-zone, it pays to stay alert. One minute he's all 'She means nothing to me' and the next he's firing us and going fruit loops. Don't tell me you're not getting little deja vu shivers here?"
"I think it's different, this time," Wesley said. "I think he only wants some kind of resolution with her."
"You hope," Cordelia said. Angel and Darla were still engrossed in their heart-to-heart. Fred was frenziedly scribbling in her corner; Lorne and Gunn had given up trying to follow what she was doing and were currently bonding over a mutual appreciation of early Motown. Cordelia was free to talk to Wesley privately, and while she didn't relish the prospect of what she had to tell him, she could no longer put it off. "Wes, there's something --"
"Cordy, I need to --"
They stopped simultaneously. "You first," Cordelia said.
"No, please. You."
Cordelia took a deep breath. "Wesley, we're not bringing the other me back with us. If anyone has a right to make the final decision, I do, and I'm saying no. I know what it's like in her head; that was me for a day and a half. The pain -- it just burns you up. After a whole year, she's all burnt away inside. What's left --" she shook her head, "It's just a body. When this universe goes, it'd be kinder to let her go with it."
She steeled herself, waiting for the inevitable tide of outrage and anger.
It didn't come.
"I know," Wesley said softly. "I suppose I knew as soon as we saw her, really. But I couldn't bear the thought that there was nothing I could do -- that there was no hope for you --"
"For her," Cordelia corrected him gently. "She's not me."
"I realize that now."
Cordelia nodded. "But -- thank you for wanting to do it." Wesley smiled and quickly squeezed her hand.
"Finished!" Fred yelled.
Everyone looked around, or up, or broke off their conversations. Cordelia, closely followed by Wesley, hurried back to where Fred sat. As she pulled up a chair, she looked down at the arithmetical jumble on the tabletops and remembered, with some sadness, that acceptance letter from Duke she'd had to throw away. The best education Daddy's stolen money could buy -- maybe that would have helped her understand a little bit of what Fred was working through here. It was easy to miss when she was hiding from cheese, but Fred, Cordelia realized, was smart. Scary smart. Willow smart.
Probably smart enough to handle herself around Angel, she thought. Which is good, considering Angel's track record for not handling himself around women.
"So, Fred, what are we dealing with?" Angel said.
Cordelia looked up to see him, not huddled in a corner staring at his precious Darla, but leading her back to their group. She smiled in welcome and was relieved to see him smile back.
"I'm not 100 percent sure," Fred said without looking up from her calculations, "but I think we are dealing with some serious trouble."
"Okay, when the girl who was talking about switching dimensions like it was running out for milk and a newspaper says that something is 'serious trouble,' I start to worry," Gunn said. "What's the what?"
"That last reality quake should have been the last," Fred said. "The level of chaos shouldn't have been reversible." Cordelia thought of the thorned and bloodied library and shuddered.
"But Angelus did reverse it," Wesley said.
"Which he shouldn't have been able to do at all," Fred said. "I don't understand the magic you're talking about, but apparently Angelus is able to force the natural laws of this universe to make sense. It's as if -- as if he's constructing a past for this universe as well as a future. Binding it with the true universes of the multiverse, one that began with the Big Bang and won't end until the end of time. He's changing this dimension from unreal to real."
"And this is a problem why?" Gunn said.
"Because," Angel said, "if this dimension becomes real, then it gets a whole lot harder to get home."
"When did you go to M.I.T.?" Cordelia asked.
"Just listened to Fred," Angel said. "Did I get that right?"
Fred nodded grimly. "Except that it won't just be harder to get home. It will be impossible."
Cordelia's stomach clenched. Gunn's jaw dropped. "Impossible? Why?" Wesley said.
"Because this universe will have fundamentally changed its nature since we entered it," Fred said. "It won't bear the same relationship to our universe that it did before. It's like -- like trying to navigate by the North Star if you've been moved to the southern hemisphere. You may still understand the principles, but you don't have the guide you need."
"This making any sense to anybody?" Cordelia said.
"I could show you the math --"
"That won't help, muffin," Lorne said. "But thanks for offering. Okay, we have to stop Angelus. Pronto. How do we do that?"
Wesley straightened up. "We could stake him," he said. "I know none of us wants to consider what that would mean -- staking a form of Angel that has his soul. But if that's what it takes --"
"Won't help," Darla said. "Very few people stay dead here for long. You never know when somebody who perished in a quake or died of old age is going to pop back up."
"I guess that explains why you don't just throw yourself in front of a bus," Cordelia said, hoping her tone communicated just how much she wished Darla would do something of the kind.
Darla smiled thinly at her in reply. "I can't tell you how many times that Irishman's showed up, railing at Angelus, saying his threw his life away for nothing. If you think I drink, you should see Angelus after one of those visits."
Cordy felt her body go cold and weak at the thought of Doyle, torn from his death and returned to it, over and over and over again. Angel caught her eyes for a moment, and she could see he was equally stricken.
Wesley had no memories of Doyle, but he was obviously very affected too. "That means -- even if we did succeed in staking Angelus, he might return and take up his work again before we could get home," he said. "Oh, dear. Poor Mr. Giles."
Cordy frowned. "Giles?"
"He said -- the dead kept calling him, that Buffy kept asking him to save her, over and over," Wesley said. His face was pale. "He was telling the literal truth. She does do that. No wonder he was drinking."
"These people come back?" Gunn's voice was rough, strained with thinly veiled emotion. "You mean -- my people might --"
"Not the sacrifices," Darla said. "Those deaths are -- different, somehow. Those people stay dead. Angelus used to hope and hope they wouldn't, but -- and oh, he tried everything. He tried animals. He tried demons. But in the end, it all comes down to the same thing. He has to take a human life, end it for good. Now, though, he thinks he's very close to being done. Maybe just one more person."
"And he'll commit that sacrifice as soon as he can," Angel said. "Tonight?"
"Probably," Darla said.
"We gotta move fast, then," Gunn said. "Gotta take the guy prisoner before he gets the chance --"
"We can't do that." Cordelia was surprised to see it was Fred who had interjected. "Angelus knows which portals are active and when. He knows exactly where to be. That's information we need."
"There's about a twenty-five percent chance he's headed here, right?" Lorne said. "How convenient and yet how distressing."
"Those odds aren't even close to good enough," Angel said.
"We might draw him here just by thinking about it," Fred suggested.
Cordelia stared. "All we need is the power of positive thinking?"
"Well, kind of," Fred said. "You see, we're -- more real -- than this universe. That means our thoughts and emotions have a powerful influence here. In fact, I think --" She suddenly looked more uncertain, more hesitant, than she had in a long time. "In fact, I think this entire universe is based on our emotions. On our fears, maybe. I mean, what's everyone here afraid of the most?"
There was a long moment of silence, during which nobody seemed able to speak or meet anyone else's eyes. Finally, hesitantly, Angel said, "That I would lose control of myself. That I'd lose my friends."
"I kinda figured that," Fred said. "And, um, I think maybe Cordelia and Wesley were worried about that too."
"Understatement of the year," Cordelia muttered.
"So that happened here," Fred continued. She looked at Gunn. "And your friends getting hurt -- that was something you were worried about?" He nodded, his expression distant, turned inward. "And for me -- well, it's been a long time since the world seemed to make sense. The signs of instability are really awfully overt here. I think that's my fault. I can't figure out Lorne's, though."
"Oh, that's easy," Lorne said breezily. "I have a deep-seated terror of bad interior decorating, which has come to pass. I mean, look at this place," he said, gesturing at a cow-patterned bench. "And have you SEEN the drapes at Cordelia's now?"
Cordelia was pretty sure that home decor wasn't Lorne's worst nightmare, but there was little point in pursuing it now. "That's kind of weird, the universe just -- knowing -- what we were scared of. Like it was eavesdropping or something."
Fred nodded. "I think it used those emotions. Both to shape this universe and to try to destroy it."
"So stuff we think actually happens?" Gunn said. "Okay, nobody think about the Stay-Puft marshmellow man."
"We exert a powerful influence," Fred said. "In order to break down completely, the universe would need to throw off that influence as much as possible. So I think -- I think we were being driven apart. That our emotions about certain things might have been amplified. Like about, say, cheese."
Cordelia shared a quick glance with Wesley, then with Angel. Angel's guiltathon, her freakout, Wesley's anger -- all of it had been off-the-scale, hadn't it? And she wasn't at all sure this weirdo universe was to blame. But they could consider that later. She said, "You're telling us we have influence over this whole universe."
"Your dream come true," Wesley said with a smile.
Cordelia pretended not to hear. "So, Angelus -- if we all sit here and call his name, he'll show?"
"That's still not a guarantee," Angel said. "If our fears are as strong as our wishes, then there's no telling what effect we will or won't have."
"We have to set him up," Wesley said. "We have to -- draw him out. Find a way to follow him, to discover what he knows."
Gunn shook his head. "The guy's a step ahead of us. He's Angel -- except he knows this dimension better than we do by a mile. How do we get a step ahead of him?"
"We use what he doesn't have," Cordelia said. The others all stared at her, and she hated to finish what she had to say -- but she knew she had to. "We use the one thing he doesn't know."
***
Darla had made sure to wheedle a bottle of whisky from Angel before they parted. It was sad, even a little pathetic, that their final farewell had proved such an anticlimax. For decade upon decade, they had been triumphant, glorious lovers, as decadent and beautiful as the world they had inhabited. Now he was a quiet, melancholy man in a bar and she was his broken-down ex, begging for a drink.
What the hell. She'd gotten the drink.
She lifted the bottle to her mouth and gulped deeply, telling herself it was necessary for the deception; Angelus would never believe that she'd wandered off all day for any reason beyond getting more alcohol. Darla dropped the bottle back into her bag, took a quick breath, grasped her real prize tightly, and went into the Hyperion lobby.
The lobby was as silent and dingy and depressing as ever. Darla could only face it because she was, at last, pretty sure it was the final time. "Angelus!" she called. "Come downstairs!"
A few moments of silence, then the soft pad of bare feet on the hotel's threadbare carpet. "Where were you?" He sounded sleepy and vaguely annoyed. "I wanted you."
As Angelus, clad only in a pair of boxers, appeared at the top of the stairs, Darla put on her prettiest smile. "I was out getting a present for you."
Angelus stared. She laughed as merrily as she could. "Do you like it? Its name is Fred."
The thin young woman whose arm Darla was gripping with the little strength she had left looked up at Angelus. Her face looked nervous, but Darla could tell it was only an act. So far.
"I don't want to know her name. I don't want to know anything else about her." Angelus came down the stairs slowly; after that first hard glare, he didn't look directly at Fred. "Where did you find her?"
"She was begging for money near the liquor store," Darla said. "She's a runaway, I think. I told her we'd pay her to play with us tonight." Angelus had used the story himself before. It worked more often than Darla would ever have thought.
"I won't do anything too weird," Fred said, and the trembling in her voice wasn't feigned. Good, Darla thought. Now you know what you're dealing with. That works for us, and makes this little performance of yours halfway believable. "The lady was nice to me --"
Angelus walked up to them, leaned past Fred's shoulder and kissed Darla hard. As his tongue pushed between her lips, Darla wondered idly if he'd want to take her right in front of the girl. They used to enjoy that, once upon a time. She didn't care -- she and Angelus could probably teach this mouse-brown waif a thing or two -- but she suspected Fred wouldn't feel the same way. The girl was pressed between their bodies; Darla could feel her shaking now, frightened, probably most of all by her invisibility to Angelus.
He didn't want to see the girl, didn't want to face what he had to do.
But he would, Darla knew. In the end he would.
When their lips parted, he whispered, "Take her to the car."
"Is it time already?" Darla asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"Past time," Angelus said.
On to Chapter Ten