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What It Means To Be Alive (Page 3 of 7)
By Hephaestus

Summary: The nature of love and what it means to be human.
Author's Profile: @ fanfiction.net
Part of a Series: This is the sequel to They Did Not Fade Away.
Disclaimer: Joss owns all. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Comments: Please read and review!

. . .

Chapter 11

Angel was exhausted. Will did not look much better. Leaning against the car outside a large structure almost three hours outside the city, they both took deep breaths away from the smell of carnage and bloodshed.

They had worked together in their operation. It hadn’t taken them very long to gain access to the house, the cameras watching the perimeter weren’t fast enough to catch them on video. Even if they had, all the people watching the monitors would have seen were two men dressed all in black with face masks hiding their identities. There was no need to announce their presence until they were ready to do so.

Angel was recognized quickly once he took the suffocating mask off. He didn’t care if they knew it was him. Will was an unexpected opponent, and the guards were poorly equipped to deal with two people who possessed the strength and speed of highly trained vampires.

It wasn’t until every guard in the house was dead that Will removed the mask. He didn’t need word getting out that he hadn’t died, but had changed his identity. It was better to be a secret weapon.

Lepysis, a cousin of the dead Archduke Sebassis, was somewhere in the complex. Angel had known that Sebassis had a few family members he hadn’t murdered for his title, but he hadn’t really considered any of them a threat. He was regretting that mistaken now.

The two hybrids moved quickly through the complex, killing any guard they encountered. Lepysis, unlike his cousin, did not only employ only demons of his own race. The guards were big, of varying colors and textures, and very violent. Angel had started to enjoy himself somewhere around the fifth or sixth guard.

They moved quickly, wasting no time; there was no need to give Lepysis room to escape. When they reached the aging demon, he was indeed on his way out the back door.

They took turns trying to make him talk. He was not being very forthcoming.

Grabbing his long, thin horns, Angel bent the left one back slowly. The demon howled after it was almost at a ninety degree angle from his head. “Tell me what you want from Wesley. Money? A favor? What do you want from him?”

The demon alternated between laughing and howling in pain. This made Angel mad. He twisted the already bent horn until he heard cracking. This caused a new level of screaming.

“Still laughing? Why don’t you answer my question?”

“Narsesim is coming.” An incessant and maddening laugh came from the demon’s throat.

Nothing either Angel or Will did could stop him from laughing. Even when he screamed in agony, he quickly started laughing again. Seeing they were going to get no further, they abandoned their quest for information and killed the white skinned creature.

Angel looked at Will as they watched the sun come up over the horizon. Lepysis’s blood was rank, it smelled like blood that had sat for too long in a room with dead bodies. They were both covered with it, and Angel was sure he was never going to get the smell out of his nostrils. Will didn’t look too pleased at their situation either.

“Normally, I would go to Wes to ask him who Narcissism is, but I don’t think that’s an option right now.”

“It’s Narsesim, Will, not narcissism. And I know who he is. Xander discovered a cult in the Dubai branch that was trying to resurrect him. They called him Narsysic, though. Probably a translation error.” Turning to the trunk of the car, he pulled out the extra clothes Will had brought.

They wiped most of the muck from themselves and changed into cleaner garb, but they still smelled, and Angel was pretty sure he had the blood of one of the guards stuck in his hair. Will climbed tiredly into the passenger seat. It had been a long couple of days. Turning his phone on, he looked at his missed calls and swore. He would have called Dawn back, but he knew he would be seeing her in a few hours. She was going to start work today.

That gave him an idea. “Can Dawn research this guy? This Narsesim, or whatever his name is. I mean, what do you know from Xander’s report?”

He hesitated. He knew more than he wanted to think about. His brain didn’t really want to believe what he already knew to be true. Swallowing hard, he tried to choose his words carefully. “The cult in Dubai sacrificed children to this hell god. He demands innocent blood to be resurrected. Xander never looked into what this demon god would do once he was brought into our dimension.”

Stunned, Will stayed silent for a few minutes. His brain was screaming obscenities. When he finally found his voice, he notices Angel was driving at almost a ninety miles an hour. “We’re going to Fred.”

He nodded. Bile was rising in his throat and he wasn’t sure he could speak without his voice wavering. He wanted to believe Allyson would be spared, but he thought of Connor and knew that children, even babies, were targets for evil. If Connor could be kidnapped and taken to a hell dimension to be raised by an abusive and obsessive freak of a man, Allie could be sacrificed to raise a hell god. There were few beings more innocent than newborns.

Pushing the car as much as he could, he asked whatever power that would listen to please protect that baby girl. He pleaded mentally with Cordy, hoping she would have some pull somewhere. He just needed time to get there and get them to safety.

Will was already calling Wes’s apartment. Fred answered, sounding none to happy to woken up at the crack of dawn.

He skipped all preliminaries. “Get out of the apartment. Grab Ally and Wesley and go to Angel’s house. Go now. Don’t pack anything. Just go.”

The fear in her voice was evident. She was hardened, but not so much that she wouldn’t fear for her baby. “What’s going on? Will, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain, but right now there isn’t any time. Get to Angel’s house.” He hung up before she could press him for information and hit the speed dial button for Angel’s house.

It took Buffy a little longer to pick up the phone than it had taken Fred.

“What?” She sounded like she could strangle him through the connection.

“Don’t go to work. Stay there, Fred and Wes and the baby are on their way. Don’t leave the house, Angel and I are on our way.” He hung up abruptly and met Angel’s furious stare.

“A pregnant slayer is better protection than no protection at all.”

Angel stopped himself from backhanding Will. “You’re putting her in danger.”

“And? What about Allie and Fred? They’re not in danger? At least Buffy could hold the fort until we got there. On their own, they’re toast.”

He held his tongue. What was done was done and hopefully Fred was already in the car with Wesley and the baby and heading for the hills. Gripping the steel wheel so tight he thought it might break, he barked a command to call Dawn and get her to start researching.

Will didn’t give Dawn a chance to say anything when she answered. He told her to get to Angel’s and gave her the name of the god she was to research. Angel repeated the name the cult in Dubai had used so Will could give her both names to research. Will hung up before Dawn had a chance to say anything.

Will couldn’t decide if he wanted to beat Wesley to a pulp now or later. Checking his anger, he deciding now was not the time to put Wes in the hospital. He would satisfy that need when this mess was sorted.

. . .

Chapter 12

Dawn was in the car and speeding through yellow lights before she realized her heart was beating a hundred miles an hour. Her hair was a mess, she was in the track pants and t-shirt she had slept in, and she barely managed to grab her purse and put on a bra before running out the door and pealing from her parking spot.

She had heard of this demon. Buffy had mentioned it on the phone the night before, when she was talking about Xander’s activities overseas. She had mentioned something about sacrifices and raising this hell god. As anxious as Will had sounded, she figured he was about to raised.

Luck was with her as she drove, no cops tried to pull her over. She reached Angel’s house in record time and practically ran to the door. Buffy pulled it open before Dawn could knock.

“What’s going on?” Buffy was in a robe, sweat pants, and t-shirt. Her hair was hastily pulled into a ponytail, and she looked a little worried and very mad.

“Will called me, told me to research that demon. The demon that cult Xander stopped was worshipping. Could you call Xan and tell him to get here? I think he could help me.”

Buffy stopped herself from asking more questions. Dawn was in research mode. She swore to beat it out of Angel, if necessary, when he got home. She called Xander and relayed the little information she had. He was groggy, obviously jet lagged, but he said he would be there as soon as he could. Making coffee in the kitchen soothed her a little. The normality and habit of the motions calmed her ruffled nerves.

Baby was kicking and she had to place a steadying hand on her abdomen. She noticed that when she got stressed, the baby kicked. She wondered if she and her child would have the same connection she and Angel shared. They had figured out the pull they both felt when Buffy first arrived in Los Angeles had been their connection, calling to each other. She hoped she would feel the same thing with her baby.

It wasn’t long until she heard another car pull in the driveway. Her hopes soared for a moment, but they quickly crashed again when she opened the door to Wesley and Fred. Fred looked shaken, and she had definitely just gotten out of bed. Allie was in her arms, sleeping peacefully. When Buffy looked at Wes, she was taken aback. His eyes were bloodshot and the anxiety he was feeling was clearly visible on his face. She had reacquainted herself with Wesley, and he was the kind of man that held his cards very close to his chest. It was disconcerting to see so much emotion on his face.

When Wesley had set the car seat in the living room and Fred had situated her sleeping baby into it, they followed Buffy a few feet away into the kitchen. Fred sat with a clear line of sight to her child. Wes paced.

“Angel and Will are on their way. They went out last night and never came back. I don’t know what’s going on. Wes?” looking expectantly at the ex-watcher, she knew he was aware of what all this fuss was about.

“I…did a deal with some unscrupulous people. I believe Angel and Will feel that my family is in danger over it. I can’t say I disagree.”

Fred shot daggers at her husband. Her eyes were burning with anger and also a large level of sorrow. Buffy could sympathize with Fred’s feeling of betrayal.

“You did what? What kind of deal, Wesley? Why didn’t you tell me and why are we in danger?” Her voice had steadily risen in volume as she was speaking, and Allie started to wail at the unwelcome noise.

Rising, Fred didn’t wait for an answer. She went to her baby, lifting her from the carrier and rocking her while she walked circles around the room.

The doorbell interrupted Buffy from pressing Wesley further. Xander followed her into the house, taking stock of the hastily dressed occupants and the crying infant. This is not going to be good, he surmised. Not good at all.

. . .

Chapter 13

Angel and Will leapt from the car and were in the house before anyone had heard them pull in. They had gotten back into LA in almost half the time it had taken them to get to Lepysis’s complex. By the look on Buffy’s face, Angel knew he didn’t look too good. She came to him in an instant, touching his hair with a look of horror and disgust.

“I’ll wash it out later,” he assured her.

“What happened? Where were you two?”

Will was already at the coffee pot, pouring two large mugs for him and Angel. They gulped the hot beverage before either answered. Angel had to remember to breathe before he could swallow again and think of an answer.

Xander came out from the hall that led to the library, where Dawn and Wesley undoubtedly were. He nodded a greeting and leaned against the kitchen counter. Fred was sitting on the couch with Allie in the crook of her arm. She looked ready to fall asleep and yet too wired to doze off.

It took another few gulps of coffee before Angel could answer. He had grown accustomed to at least three or four hours a sleep a night. “We went to this demon’s house, the demon that was planning to raise Narsesim. Well, I think he was going to raise him. We killed everybody in the complex, including the head demon guy. And I got blood in my hair. Where’s Wes?”

“In the library.” He was gone before Buffy could ask anything further. Will, however, looked ready to be interrogated. She only had to glare at him to get him to start speaking.

“So…Wes did a bad deal. Well, he thought it was a good deal. You should hear that part from him, though. Anyway, he got a note threatening blackmail. Chaos ensued and I spent the weekend tracking who was doing the blackmail. We got to this lepsin guy and he told us Nar-what’s his face is coming. Then we panicked and drove here like a bat out of hell. That’s the short of it.”

She shook her head. Did there always have to be a crisis? She sat heavily next to Fred and squeezed the woman’s hand. Buffy knew she was hurting.

Fred wasn’t just hurting, she was planning. Her devious side had taken over, and her planning of what to do about this situation was foremost in her mind. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out what Wesley had done. The fact that neither Angel nor Will would explain what ‘the deal’ was only confirmed her beliefs. She wasn’t exactly mad.

She understood why Wes had done it. It just wasn’t acceptable. It was morally wrong, and cosmically dangerous. The cosmos were out of alignment. Nothing came for free.

Something in her recognized the name Will had butchered pronouncing. Fred just couldn’t place what she knew or where she knew it from. It was dangling in the back of her mind, and the more she reached for it the further away it seemed.

Leaning her head back on the couch, she wondered if Wesley was getting anywhere.

. . .

Angel was pacing and glaring. Wesley shifted uncomfortably in his seat and Dawn pretended not to notice the silent argument taking place. After a few minutes, Wesley excused himself to go to the bathroom and Angel had sat at the long table Dawn was seated at and started helping research.

Wesley did not need to use the bathroom. He had to get away from Angel’s staring. He was still not sorry about what he had done. He was sorry about the trouble he had caused everyone and had been silently repenting for the danger his family was in, but he could not make himself regret the deal he had made. It had seemed so simple. He would get what he needed and the witches would be well compensated. He had paid them very well for their services. He had never expected them to sell the information to the highest bidder. His excitement had clouded his judgment.

He wandered through the back halls until he reached Angel’s office. The door was open, and Wes found himself walking into the room before he consciously knew he what he was doing. Looking down at the glass case, he could not explain the draw he felt to this ragged and aged tome.

His breath caught in his throat and he wondered if Willow had ever been in this room. Thinking back, he realized that neither Willow nor Dawn had ever been in Angel’s office. Now he thought he understood why. Wesley was no warlock, but he had conducted his fair share of spells. He could recognize power when he felt it. This book was emanating power. Had Willow been here, he was sure she would feel its pull as well. Lifting the glass cover, he carefully removed the text and set it on the desk. All he needed now was the password.

. . .

Angel looked up. Wesley had been gone a long time. Standing, he made his way from the library and through the halls. Will has headed towards him.

“I was going to help with the research…what’s…” He didn’t get to finish.

“Is Wes out there?”

“No. I thought Wes was with you.”

Angel was off. Will was close on his heels, but neither got to the office before an explosion of blue light sucked the breath from their bodies. They heard people in the living room falling to the fall and few grunts of pain throughout the house. Will had turned on his heel and was heading towards the sounds of pain.

Running into the office, Angel stopped suddenly, frozen in horror. Wes was sitting at his desk, a picture of Connor in front of him. Wesley was crying.

. . .

Chapter 14

Wesley felt the rush of air as he flew through the air. The breath was knocked violently from his body as he hit the floor. Before he could put up much a fight, he was being lifted by his shirt collar, a very angry Angel screaming at him in the process.

“Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea?” Shaking Wesley, Angel threw him again.

He wanted to beat the living hell out of Wesley. The man had stolen his son, screwed up the life of his own wife and child beyond belief and stolen back the memories Angel had sacrificed so much to see locked away forever.

His hand was caught in mid air before his fist could connect with Wesley’s head. Turning, he caught Will’s arm and pivoted, effectively slamming the other man’s hip into the desk. Will winced, but didn’t let go of Angel’s arm. Instead, he pulled Angel violently, bringing the man closer to him before shoving with all his might. He watched as Angel flew through the window and landed on the lawn.

Will knew he had to get Angel away from Wes. Will wanted to kill Wesley too, and it wasn’t his son that the man had stolen. Leaping through the gaping hole in the window, glass flew around him, shards embedding themselves into his skin. There was no time to think about that, Angel’s hands were connecting with his organs.

Throwing a punch into Will’s liver, he coiled his right leg and unleashed a volley of kicks at the other man’s head. Will’s head snapped back and his nose started bleeding, but he was still standing.

Spinning, Will leapt into the air and caught Angel on the side of his head with his foot. Even though he was stunned, Angel still reached up and grabbed Will’s ankle. Spinning him, Angel let go, letting Will’s momentum take him hard into the ground.

Will was on his feet before Angel reached him. They exchanged lightning quick blows that most humans would only recognize as a blur of arms and legs. Angel broke the stalemate with a vicious hit to Will’s temple. He watched as Will hit the ground.

Before Angel could advance any more, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun and caught his action just in time. Buffy was staring at him. Her eyes were flashing emotions quicker than Angel could name them. He unclenched his fist and put his arm down. There was no use fighting now.

Dejectedly, he stepped through the broken window and looked at Wesley, who was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands.

“I didn’t mean…” He couldn’t finish a thought, and he definitely could not finish a statement.

Dawn was staring at the scene, shock all over her features. Xander and Fred were behind her. Fred was still holding Allyson, but she looked pale and as if she was about to be sick. None of them broke the silence for what seemed like a long time.

Looking Angel straight in the eye, Fred lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. “You bastard.” Turning on her heel, she was storming out of the room before Angel could react.

His legs felt like lead and he could feel blood trickling down his forehead and into his left eye. His ribs were bruised and his shins ached from blocking a few kicks at odd angles. He was going to be sore for a few days.

Buffy climbed back through the window, Will close behind her. He looked a little worse than Angel, but he hadn’t been fighting with the same ferocity. Will opened his mouth to speak, but Buffy beat him to it.

“We need to have a meeting. Now.”

Angel nodded ascent once and then disappeared into the hallway. He was in the bathroom before anyone could follow him. He dug the heel of his hands into his eyes, fighting back the tears that had threatened him for so long. He would not cry now, he vowed. Looking at the medicine cabinet, he reached for an object he had not used in some time.

The relief was immediate, as always, but not as intense as it usually was. He made another line, below the first one. The pain focused him again, as the lines of blood running down his arm brought him back to reality with a sharp jolt. Cleaning his head wound quickly, he slapped a bandage on all the bleeding wounds he could see.

When he came into the living room, Fred and the baby were no where in site. The car seat was gone too. Xander was pacing, agitation clear on his face. Will had managed to get Wesley into the living room and seated on a couch, but he doubted the man would be able to complete a sentence that made sense any time soon.

Dawn dabbed a cloth on Will’s temple. There was a purple pocket of blood under the open wound and he clenched his teeth and grunted while she pushed some of the blood out. He wasn’t happy. He just couldn’t decide who he was angrier at. Wes had started a lot of problems, but Angel seemed to have a knack for finishing them. He was, most of all, though, mad he hadn’t already dealt with the Connor situation. He knew with certainty he could have prevented all this if he had admitted his knowledge to Angel and forced him to at least tell Buffy.

As it was, they now had multiple crises to deal with. Angel was in deep shit with Fred, and probably Gunn if he remembered. Wesley was close to insane, and Fred and Allie were missing. He clenched his teeth in frustration.

Buffy glared at Angel. She was carefully controlling her anger, because since that blue light had hit her, baby had started doing kung fun inside her. She didn’t want to upset baby any more. When she spoke, it was with a forced calm. “Explain.”

Taking a shaky breath, he dragged his hand through his hair, which was still stiff and tainted green with demon blood. This was not a good day for him, he thought. “I…had a son. With Darla.” He avoided Buffy’s eyes while he said the last part.

“When Connor was a few months old, we received this prophecy. Wes interrupted it. He didn’t tell anyone what he found. The prophecy said ‘the father will kill the son.’ We found out later Wolfram and Hart had designed it. A man whose family I killed as Angeles was brought back by Wolfram and Hart for the sole purpose of killing me. Instead, he stole my son. Connor was raised in a hell dimension, and came back a few months later as a teenager…time passes differently in hell.

Connor…was okay for a while, but…he was unstable most of the time. He…well, I had a choice. Kill him, or erase his memories and give him new ones. Wolfram and Hart offered the presidency of the company in exchange for giving Connor a new life and erasing him from existence, as far as anyone but me knew. I took that deal.”

His head snapped up to look at Wesley with sudden understanding. A man would do anything for his child. He understood Wesley a little better in that moment.

His thoughts were interrupted by Dawn’s voice. “That’s…awful. Oh my God.” She sat heavily, holding her stomach to keep from being sick. A lot of things about Angel suddenly made more sense. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done in his position. Erasing memories was a huge overstepping of boundaries, as far she was concerned, but he had done it to save his son. That was a choice she would not want to have to make.

Before anyone else could react, they heard the front door fly open and an irate Gunn was storming into the room.

“What the fuck! Someone explain to me what just happened!”

“I opened Pandora’s box.” Everyone’s head snapped to look at Wesley. He was still staring at the floor. He remembered everything, the prophecy, his fear, his throat being slit, Angel trying to kill him, Connor sinking Angel to the bottom of the ocean for a summer. It was all flying around in his brain, scrambling his thoughts.

“I…thought you were going to kill him. I thought I was doing to right thing. I didn’t think it would happen that way. I just…it shouldn’t have happened that way.”

The anger in the room was slowly turning into grief. Wes’s pain was palpable and contagious. Buffy suddenly felt faint. She excused herself, motioning for Angel to stay where he was, as she made her way upstairs and into bed.

Gunn joined Xander in pacing the room. Gunn’s head was swimming. He couldn’t quite get everything straight yet, but he had the gist of things.

“Okay,” Dawn stood, “we need to stop this. Connor and Angel are secondary to Narsesim and Allyson. Does anyone want to know what I found?”

There was silence for a few minutes, but everyone seemed to recover enough to go into the library. There would time to sort all that out later, was the mutual consensus. There were more pressing things at hand.

. . .

Chapter 15

Fred was trying to keep herself together. Who had she married? She realized she had been sleeping with a stranger. Looking in the rearview mirror, she watched her sleeping infant in the back seat for a split second before returning her attention to the road.

She remembered Connor as a baby. He had been so cute. He had been the light of Angel’s life, she thought. Connor was the lifeline that tethered him to humanity more so than any other person. When he had lost his son, when Wesley had stolen him, and then lost him to Holtz, she corrected herself, he had gone off the deep end. She had been so scared in those days. When she watched Gunn and half a dozen orderlies drag Angel away from Wesley’s prone form and down the hall, she had felt her soul shake. The pain in his screams had been almost unbearable to hear.

And now, Wesley had made a deal with the devil. He hadn’t meant to, but that was how it seemed it was going to work out. She was almost across the city, and the traffic was getting lighter as the day wore on. She could be out of California reasonably fast, she thought.

Getting her and her daughter to safety were the only things on her mind. They were the last things on her mind, as she stopped at a red light, and unconsciousness hit her like a sledgehammer.

When she was able to open her eyes again, it was dark. The room was dry and warm and dark. The floors felt tiled, but there were no seems. As she picked herself up and examined the walls to keep from panicking entirely, she found that were no seems anywhere. This was not a room made by the hands of men.

That was when she panicked. Her breath quickened, and before she could stop herself, she was throwing her fists into the wall with all her might, screaming at the top of her lungs while she did so.

The lights blinded her when they came on. It took her second to realize the lights didn’t come on, there were no lights in the ceiling. The light was created by the man now standing in front of her. She lunged at him with all her might. She hit the ground hard and turned to realize that she had gone right through him.

“That won’t work, I’m afraid. Behave now or I’ll have to kill you.”

She sat silently for a few minutes trying to get her breathing under control, and then stood slowly and looked at this man in front of her.

He was wearing dark blue robes. His hair was stringy and a dingy brownish color. The skin she could see on his face and hands was a gray, flaking skin. He looked like he was halfway through decomposing. His eyes were almost falling from their sockets, and yet they held a level of intelligence there that scared her. His was not a benevolent intelligence.

“Be quiet now. Do not make me have to hurt you.”

Sensing he was about to disappear, she jumped to speak. “Where is my baby? Is she okay?”

“She is for now. Her purpose is of great importance; she will soon help to bring the true one into this world. Do not worry; you will have the highest honor, being the mother to the bringer of the lord of this dimension.”

Before she could speak again, he was gone and it was dark again. She fell to the floor, racking sobs shaking her body. She beat her fists on the floor, begging whatever powers would listen to protect her baby.

. . .

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