apocalypsos | (no subject)

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Pairing: None, I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like. (Okay, well, maybe a little pairing. But not that one, 'cause ... uh, no. Just no.)
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.
Archive: Just give me fair warning.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or this universe. And of course, this is brutally obvious, as I am not currently on a rooftop in L.A. right now picking WB executives with an M-16.
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home"; Buffy -- "Chosen"

Chapter Five: His Girl Friday the 13th

During the complete and total destruction of Wolfram and Hart and its centrally located office complex, not to mention the chaos that ensued during that sort of minor apocalypse, the past (and future) employees of Angel Investigations somehow managed to smuggle away more office supplies than a temp with a grudge. Fred made it out of the place with enough lab equipment to turn one of the rooms in the new building into a mad scientist's dream, Wesley kept producing new Post-It notes like a magician pulling quarters out of children's ears, and Spike ... well, Spike had grabbed something he hadn't felt right leaving behind.

In Angel's opinion, a rather loud and anoying something that was currently perched on the edge of his desk filing its nails.

".. so then I thought that maybe I should just eat her and look in her pockets for loose change, but Blondie Bear said no eating the clients, so ..."

Angel narrowed his eyes and resisted a growl as he looked up at Harmony from the report on his desk. The report was short, concise, full of badly lit photos that didn't tell him much, and attached to a map that told him even less but gave him far too much hope than he was starting to think he deserved. "Don't you have someone else to talk to?"

"Not really. It's not like you have a secretarial pool I can beat up. Unless Wesley counts. Ooo, can I hit him?" She brightened considerably, and for a moment, he almost considered letting her do it.

Of course, then he'd have Harmony and Wesley in his office ranting at him. With a resigned sigh, he turned his attention back to the file and said, "No, you can not hit Wesley."

"Even if I promise not in the face?"

"Look, don't you have work to do?"

Harmony let loose with a disgusted yet ladylike snort as she rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Every time I touch something in this place, someone has a hissy fit. I was going to clean some of the weapons, but the Jolly Green Carson out there practically had a coronary when I picked up one of the axes."

Angel winced. He didn't even want to think about Harmony going near the weapons, or what would make Lorne snatch an ax from her hands and run in the opposite direction. "Harmony --"

"It's not that I don't like this thing where I stare at the wall and still get a paycheck. Although that probably pays more, but still."

"You know, you can leave anytime you want. It's not like we've got you under lock and key."

Harmony gave him a strange look as she stopped filing, and he added, "Okay, one time. But if you hadn't bitten that accountant --"

"Are you trying to apologize?" she said, her expression genuinely confused.

It suddenly struck Angel that an apology probably wasn't what she was looking for when it came to being chained up, and he almost shrunk down in his seat. "I guess not," he said, hoping in vain that maybe he'd sink down so far into the chair that an interdimensional portal would open up and dump him into an alternate universe where Harmony was mute.

"So, how about it?"

Annoyed, he looked back up at her and snapped, "How about what?"

"The pummeling Wesley thing. I figure if I just walk right out and whack him one right in the nose, he'll never see me coming."

Suddenly, a flash of golden-white light formed into a highly amused Cordelia sitting next to Harmony on the desk, and Angel couldn't help but smile as Harmony yelped and tipped sideways onto the floor. Cordelia, meanwhile, winked at him as she leaned over to look down at Harm and said, "Oh, please. He sees that at least once a day."

Harmony scowled over at the glowing apparition that was Cordy as she got to her feet. "Angel, make her stop doing that."

"She's a ghost, Harmony. I can't make her stop doing anything." Harmony frowned at that, but said nothing, which as Angel saw it was as close to Christmas come early as he was going to get.

When Cordelia Chase had passed out of her body in the intensive care unit and into an entirely different plane of existence, Angel and the rest of the gang had tried desperately to go on without her and were in the middle of a miserable failure at it when Cordy had suddenly appeared in all her see-through, ghostly, Lite-Bright glory wandering the halls of Wolfram and Hart like a lost tourist. Once they'd gotten over the initial shock, Angel had been the first to ask her just why the hell she was hanging around and making fun of their wardrobe choices when she could be off somewhere floating on a cloud and playing a harp. Cordy had promptly snarked that she'd been asked to stop after five minutes of harp-playing (four and a half minutes early, Lorne had later remarked) and besides, her idea of Heaven was much more along the lines of sitting right next to Spike and repeating "I'm not touching you" until he went insane.

Angel was still wondering what it would take to get on the waiting list for that particular Heaven.

She couldn't help them with cases or crimes or the occasional apocalypse -- as she'd put it, they were on their own in the saving-mankind department -- but it was just nice to know she was still around somewhere, always ready to pop up out of nowhere and give them all a smile.

"You mean won't make her stop," Harmony muttered, breaking him out of his reverie.

"Exactly," he said, then gave Cordy a polite nod as he bent over his file again. "Cordy."

"Hey, Angel," she said, then smiled wickedly as Harmony brushed some dust from her skirt. Leaning over until he had to squint from the glow, she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Do you want to tell her we all know she's sleeping with Wesley, or can I?"

Angel cocked an eyebrow at that. "Want to draw straws?"

"How about Rock, Paper, Scissors?"

The two of them held out their fists and were one count away from a decision when Harmony scowled and said, "Hey, standing right here. And also, so not nailing that big dumb British --"

"Are, too," Cordy said.

"Are not."

"Are, too."

"Look, we are not friends with benefits," Harmony snapped, nearly resorting to punctuating that statement with an indignant stamp of her foot. "Vampire's honor."

"Then how do you explain that kiss you gave him before in the kitchen?"

If Angel had been drinking a mug of fresh blood, he'd probably have choked on it, he thought, glancing over at Cordy as Harmony turned an intriguingly bright shade of red and offered up a sheepish smile. "Friends with an extraordinarily thorough dental plan?"

"You know," Cordy said, "dating in the workplace? Worst idea on the planet. Trust me."

Harmony's pretty brow furrowed in confusion as she crossed her arms. "Dating? What dating? There is no dating. Just lots of meaningless sex."

Cordy and Angel stared at her as if she were wearing a platypus for a hat.

Shutting the file, Angel forced a smile and said, "Okay, I officially know more about Wesley's sex life than I ever wanted to. How about you?" Cordy gave him a 'look', and it took him a full five seconds to remember what the last few months of Sunnydale High's existence had been like between the two of them. "Uh, forget I said that."

Cordy swung around to face her former best friend, feet dangling playfully off the desk. "I'm just saying --"

"Please," Harmony said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm getting relationship advice from the girl who didn't learn her safe-sex lesson the first time she was full of demon babies?"

"Oookay," Cordy said. "That's Harmony, one, and my emotional well-being, a big old nothin'."

Angel slammed his fist down on the desk next to the file and shot to his feet, and both women looked at him curiously. It wasn't as if either one of them was aggravating him on purpose -- neither one of them meant any harm by it ... hell, most of their conversations sounded like this. But somewhere between demon sightings and prophecies and a thin file filled with grainy photos of a beloved face, he didn't want to listen to anybody argue right now. Mostly, he just wanted to go back to his place and be depressed. He was really good at it, and he actually kind of like being depressed in times of strife. Which, granted, sort of defeated the purpose, but whatever.

"I need to hit something," he said.

Harmony took a cautious step backwards.

Spike's blond head appeared in the open doorway, and Angel could now count the number of times in his lifetime he'd ever been glad to see Spike on two hands. "Hey, Peaches, just got a call in from that lookout of yours. Something large and scaly's prowlin' around the lot."

"Huh," he said as he gave the ladies a far-too-cheery smile. "Imagine that."

Cordy shook her head in amusement and vanished with a golden puff of smoke as Angel strode from the room right behind Spike.

"I want to hit something, too," Harmony called after them.

Out in the main office, Angel tossed Wesley the keys to the car. "Wesley, you're driving."

Angel could have sworn he heard Harmony mutter, "Nuts."

********

"I still think you two crazy kids should hook up, you know. Maybe get locked together in a vault or something, yell at each other for a few days, then let your overriding passions get the better of you and go at it like bunny rabbits."

Angel gritted his teeth and tried in vain to remember that Wesley was his friend, even if he did feel like putting his head through a brick wall right now. "Okay, you know what? No more of Fred's fan fiction for you."

"What? I think you guys would look wonderful together . . . maybe get married, spawn two-point-five undead babies . . ." Wesley pulled up to the empty lot that had once been the location of Wolfram and Hart's offices, and the three of them exited the car armed to the gills. Angel Investigations had an undercover werewolf in a nearby building keeping an eye out on the land for any strange activities -- how much power might have sunk into the ground during Wolfram and Hart's destruction had become a legend among the supernatural set. Tonight, she'd spotted a hulking demon she couldn't identify by race searching the lot. Angel didn't want to think about what it was going to try here.

"What is he ramblin' on about this time?" Spike asked.

"Revenge for all the Harmony mocking," Angel muttered as he tried to look for the demon.

"And loosely translated from angst-ridden poof ..."

"He's suggesting you and me --"

Angel didn't finish the sentence. Not like Spike would have let him if he'd tried, he thought, as Spike gave Wesley a dirty look as the former Watcher tried to keep the amused grin off his face. "I'm carryin' a large, pointy broadsword, you git."

"And I'm carrying a sharpened number two pencil," Wesley said. "May the battle of the tired old cliche finally be decided."

Annoyed, Angel stopped walking right in front of them, turned to face them, and held up his hands to get them to shut up. "Okay, you know what? There's only so much taunting at other people's expense I can handle right now. So I'm making a new company policy, here and now. I don't care who's having sex with whom, or when they do, or where they do it --"

As casually as could be, Spike said, "So if I have sex with Lorne on your desk when we get back --"

"-- then you will be scraping that mental image from my brain with a Brillo pad immediately afterwards," Angel said past clenched teeth.

He stalked off still angry, but not quite as wound up as he'd been before, and Spike couldn't resist a smirk as Angel kicked in frustration at the lot's surface. "Bit amusin' to drive him out of his gourd, isn't it?"

Wesley's gaze darkened as he watched Angel search the darkness trying to figure out where a supposedly massive reptilan demon could have gotten to. "Not as much as it used to be. But he needed to vent at someone, I suppose. Might as well be us."

Spike narrowed his eyes as the mood turned serious. "You think he's got his thoughts on the hellspawn, don't you?"

Frowning, they both gave Angel a worried look before Wesley said, "The sightings are moving further west, towards ..."

"Towards here."

Wesley nodded.

"You think he's coming for Angel, then?"

"I know he is," Wesley said, watching as Angel turned to walk back towards them.

Suddenly, something came of nowhere behind Angel, as if from another dimension, and Spike yelled his name before moving towards him.

Angel spun around just in time to be grabbed by a massive clawed hand and shoved to the ground, and he watched helplessly as the demon's tail snapped out. A moment later, Spike flew through the air and slammed into the open dumpster with a loud clang, and a string of British obscenities filled the air.

The demon bent over Angel didn't look familiar, and he's seen plenty in his long years. This one reeked of rotten meat and other rancid scents he wasn't even about to identify. "You're not the one we seek," it remarked, then took a deep sniff of Angel's scent and smiled a Cheshire Cat grin dripping with bile and saliva. "Close enough," it said, moving closer to him with death in its eyes.

"Angel, move!"

Wesley raised the flamethrower he carried, and a second after Angel wrenched himself from the demon's grasp, the dark creature was engulfed in flames.

It didn't even flinch ... just kept moving towards Angel with single-minded purpose. Wesley moved to fire on it once again, but a sound from behind stopped him.

"That won't kill it."

The voice coming from behind Wesley sounded oddly familiar, and he glanced back to see a wiry figure crouched in the darkness of a hidden doorway, a panther set to pounce on its prey. The figure's gaze focused on the hulking creature currently throwing Angel against the nearest dumpster, and its eyes narrowed.

A flutter of movement from the shadows -- a quick glimpse of a thinner figure much too pale, too baby pink -- and the stranger rose in one eerily fluid motion as a ghostly white hand passed him a worn wooden baseball bat stained with demon blood. "This will," he said softly --

-- a moment before the pale feminine hand touched the bat and the worn end of it burst into green-tinted flames.

Wesley could only watch in fascination as a young man bearing an all-too-familiar face strode from the darkness with fierce determination, scanning the area with a hunter's trained eye before approaching the scaly demon. The beast sniffed loudly, and its head turned quickly to face the warrior heading towards it. "There you are," it hissed, and went for the young man.

Reaching down to pick up Spike's sword, Wesley rose and made to join the fight only to be stopped by the gentle, heartstopping sensation of a hand grasping his. Startled, he looked down to see a far too slim young woman smiling up at him, a floppy newsboy hat and dark sunglasses obscuring her eyes and obviously bald head from view. Something about her reminded him of someone, but he couldn't quite recall who, and her touch stopped him from joining the battle.

Meanwhile, the young warrior went at the demon with bat in hand, looking more like a major-league rookie determined to hit the winning run. The demon swiped at him with glistening claws extended, and the kid easily dodged each attack, the flame at the end of the bat never wavering. Suddenly, the demon turned just so, and spotting his opening, the young man thrust the bat into the creature's side with a tearing of flesh that rent the night air.

It let loose with a high-pitched scream as the green flames swallowed it whole.

A minute later, all that was left was a smoldering corpse.

The young man easily snapped the handle of the baseball bat off, then spun towards Angel and stalked towards him with makeshift stake in hand. Too stunned to move or think or breathe (if that were even possible), Angel let himself be shoved against the dumpster, suffered a thorough stare-down from a pair of eyes he'd thought he'd never look into again.

And as Angel stared at his son for the first time in years, Connor rose the broken end of the bat to his father's chest and said, "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my head?"