Chapter 13: If Nothing Else
“…For the night sky is an ocean/black distant sea/washing up to my window/all the stray dog night owl junkies/orphans vagabonds/all the angels who lost their halos/If nothing else/ I can dream/I’ll never tell never tell/all I’ve seen/right in front of me ,/ like the ghost of everything that I could be/in the cool and callous grip of reality…” ~Over the Rhine, “If Nothing Else”
Wesley pulled up outside of Fred’s apartment. Neither of them spoke, and the silence stretched between them tautly. “We did it.”
He didn’t have to ask what she was referring to. “Yes, I suppose we did.”
“Do you think Lorne will join us?”
A week ago, Wesley might have been able to answer that question with confidence—hell, a week ago he would have answered nearly any question with confidence. Tonight, he felt drained of all knowledge. As though he wasn’t quite sure of his own name. “I don’t know.”
“Will you come up?” Fred asked suddenly, turning in the seat to face him fully.
Wesley’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“I don’t want to be alone,” Fred replied. “It’s not—I mean, it’s too soon, but—”
“I’ll stay.” He spoke impulsively, but he didn’t regret the words once they were out. The gratitude on Fred’s face would have been reward enough to ensure his cooperation. Wesley parked and then followed her up, noting for the thousandth time the slenderness of her frame, the grace of her walk.
He had adored her awkwardness, her rambles, the way she had been so unsure of herself when she had first come to them. These days he admired her strength, her wit, and her determination.
There were things that were worth waiting for. Wesley thought Fred might be one of them.
Fred unlocked the door to her apartment and let him precede her inside. “I’m sorry it’s kind of a mess,” she apologized. “I haven’t been around much to clean.”
“I understand.” And he did, which was why she offered him a grateful smile.
She felt unaccountably nervous all of a sudden. “I just—there’s the one bed. I thought—”
What she might have been thinking, Wesley never found out. He cut off her words with a kiss, needing to feel her, to know that she was alright. He owed Spike a debt he could not repay, because after seeing the poor man, who had been infected with the parasite from within the sarcophagus, Wesley knew he’d almost lost her.
Fred, as he knew her, would have been gone. Their time would have been cut short.
Still, there was nothing frantic about their embrace. Now that they were out of the law office, now that they were safe, Wesley could take his time. After all, he’d been waiting for long enough.
Fred relaxed into the embrace, remembering Spike’s question of whether or not Wesley had “snogged her senseless.” She wondered if this was what he’d meant, because she didn’t feel senseless. Pleasantly muddled, maybe. And her limbs felt almost liquid, but strong. She felt strong at the same time.
When their kiss broke off, Fred gave a happy sigh and laid her head on Wesley’s chest. “Maybe you could share the bed,” she suggested. “Just to sleep.”
“That sounds lovely.” Wesley thought it was a dream come true. He had no idea what had changed, why Fred would have gone from assuring him that they were just friends to viewing him in a different light completely.
For once, however, he didn’t want to know why. He just wanted to enjoy the moment. With everything that had been going on recently, Wesley had no idea when such an opportunity would arise again.
As Cordy might have said, it was time to carpe some diem .
~~~~~
Spike was still having trouble shaking the idea that this was all a dream. It was all too surreal.
Buffy was here, she wasn’t running away, and she was close enough to touch. Not right at the moment maybe, since she was still in the shower, but in principle.
He could probably go join her, but Spike was content to lay in their bed, waiting, listening to the sounds of her in the bathroom. It was very nearly lulling him to sleep, but when she came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he tried to rouse himself.
Buffy watched him, amused. “Go back to sleep, Spike.”
“Wasn’t asleep,” he argued lazily. “I was waitin’ for you.”
“I have to dry my hair,” she replied.
He snorted. “And how am I supposed to sleep with all that racket?”
“Then don’t sleep.”
To the observer, the exchange might have been mistaken for one of their fights, but Buffy was perfectly relaxed, and Spike had dropped back down on the bed. He was watching her through heavy-lidded eyes as she dried and brushed her hair. Spike was only about half-awake at this point, and he relaxed further.
When she climbed into bed next to him, he pulled her in close, burying his face in her clean hair and taking a deep breath.
It was easy to lie there next to her, easy to let the heat from her body seep into his. That last year, when they had fought the First, this was the lesson they had learned: to be easy in one another’s company.
“Are you alright?” Spike asked. Sleepy as he was, there was still a worry niggling at the back of his mind.
“Yes, now go to sleep.”
“Not until I’m sure.”
The rebuke was mild, but it had her turning in his arms until they were nearly nose to nose. “What do you want me to say, Spike? That I was wrong? That you could be just as good without a soul as Angel can be bad with one?”
“Hush, luv.” He took her hand in his to soothe her. “Buffy, this has nothin’ to do with me. I just know—how even when you don’t love somebody, you can care about them.”
She shook her head stubbornly. In Buffy’s mind, the two vampires were linked. She had been wrong, and Spike had paid for it. “If I had—”
“Don’t.” He cut her off almost harshly. “Won’t have you beatin’ yourself up over Peaches. You know as well as I do that year was a bad one for both of us. I could have stopped it any time.”
“I never really told you how sorry I was.”
“That’s because you didn’t need to.”
The silence that lay between them then was not quite comfortable, but it was honest. “We wasted a lot of time,” Buffy murmured. “I thought we had more.”
“You never know how much time you have,” Spike reminded her. “Either of us. We’ll make the best of what we’ve got now.” Tenderly, he cupped her cheek. “I love you.”
She didn’t reply, although it wasn’t because she didn’t return the feelings. The last few days had been an emotional roller coaster, and Buffy found herself overwhelmed with feelings she didn’t know what to do with. Instead, she moved even closer, hot tears dampening Spike’s chest.
And because Spike knew her so well, he didn’t try and make it better, didn’t try to wash it away with words. He simply held her, knowing that her being there, letting him in like this, was response enough.
~~~~~
Lorne walked into the Hyperion hotel with mixed feelings. As happy as he was to have Cordelia back—and he was most certainly happy—the entire team had been torn asunder in the last few days upon her awakening.
He couldn’t manage to be happy about that.
The message from Wesley had reached him before Lorne had a chance to check in with Angel. The news was shocking, to say the least. Just the idea of Angel stealing his memories would have been bad, but pair that with the news that the vampire had killed an innocent and Lorne started to get nervous.
Nervous enough not to let Angel know where he was going—and nervous enough to do as Fred asked and pick up copies of Angel and Gunn’s contracts.
“Lorne!” Cordelia came out from behind the front desk as soon as she spotted him, enveloping him in a warm embrace. “It’s so good to see you!”
“You too, cupcake,” Lorne replied, and even the shock wasn’t enough to bleed the affection out of his voice. “And may I say you look absolutely scrumptious?”
Cordy grinned, although she tried to hide it. “Stop that. I do not.”
“Of course you do.” Lorne was all sincerity. “After everything—” He faltered and stopped. “Well, you look great.”
“Thanks.” Cordelia led him over to the round couch in the lobby. “I take it you got Wes’ message.”
“I spoke with Fredikins, too,” Lorne replied. He held up the thick sheaf of paper he was carrying. “She asked me to pull Angel and Gunn’s contracts.”
Cordelia frowned, concerned. “You aren’t going to get in trouble for that, are you?”
“I doubt it,” Lorne replied. “Angel’s holed up in his office right now. I doubt he’d notice if the building caught fire.”
“And Gunn?”
“Gunn’s on our side, Cordy,” Lorne replied. “He just doesn’t know it yet. Poor boy still thinks that Wolfram and Hart can do good . He has to, because otherwise he has to face the fact that he sold out for nothing.”
Cordy sighed. Lorne’s estimation squared with her own. Angel was still enjoying his vacation in the land of denial, and Gunn was trying very hard not to think about how wrong things had gone. “I guess when Wes and Fred get here we can start going over their contracts, maybe find a loophole.”
Lorne shook his head. Normally he was a fairly optimistic demon, but these last couple of years had taken the Pollyanna right out of him. “Good luck,” he replied dubiously. “Those lawyers there know what they’re doing when they draw up a contract.”
“Lorne, you didn’t—”
“I didn’t.” Lorne patted her hand. “After seeing Miss Morgan? As tempting as the job was, I wasn’t about to sign away my life after death too. I’d much rather just stay dead.” Cordelia sighed in relief, and he continued. “So where are Fred and Wesley?”
Cordy shrugged. “Fred called earlier and said they had to go back over to Wes’ place so he could clean up and get a change of clothes. Spike and Buffy are still sleeping, I think. It’s been a really long week for all of us.”
“So I can see.” Lorne looked around the lobby of the Hyperion with ill-disguised longing. He had been happy here. That much he was certain of. Perhaps they would be happy here again.
The demon just wasn’t sure if it would be with or without the rest of their team.
~~~~~
Hours later, the office and lobby were littered with pizza boxes and take-out containers. Both Buffy and Cordelia had given up on the research and were watching Spike, Fred, and Wesley listlessly. They were no closer to figuring out how to get Angel out of his contract.
Gunn’s contract gave him an out as long as he didn’t go to work for a competing firm and didn’t take any clients with him. They had been comforted by that discovery. When—or if—Gunn came to his senses, he could leave. There was nothing stopping him except for himself.
Angel was a completely different story.
“I can’t believe this,” Spike finally growled, throwing a handful of papers down on the table. “Does he not care about his soul? What the bloody hell was he thinkin’?”
“I imagine he was thinking of nothing else but how to save his son,” Wesley replied wearily. “Unfortunately, that does not give us much to work with.”
Cordelia rubbed her eyes. “What if he breaks the contract and just leaves?”
“Angel loses his soul,” Fred replied, making a face. “Not only that, but it—I guess you could say it goes into protective custody. Wolfram and Hart would still have it. They can do whatever they want with it.”
Buffy laughed bitterly. “That bastard. If he leaves and they keep the soul—”
“We can’t even perform the curse again,” Spike finished for her.
“That about sums it up,” Wesley agreed, burying his face in his hands.
Spike shook his head. “What if we had something to control Wolfram and Hart? Something they wanted?”
“What’s that going to be?” Cordelia asked. “They’re a really powerful law firm. They’ve got offices all over the world.”
“Not to mention in several different dimensions,” Fred pointed out.
Wesley sighed. “It’s not a bad idea, Spike. How we would find such information, though…”
“Why should we?” Buffy asked quietly. She flushed slightly when every pair of eyes turned to look at her. “I’m not saying we should throw him to the wolves or anything, but Angel isn’t doing any harm right now. In fact, he’s probably preventing Wolfram and Hart from doing really bad stuff. It might be a good idea to leave him where he’s at for now.”
There was a long silence. “I think Buffy might be right.”
Spike’s words hit Wesley hard. Even though the vampire didn’t much care for Angel, Wesley knew that Spike was the one least likely to give up. Apparently, Fred didn’t feel the same way, because she burst out, “We can’t give up on him ! He wouldn’t do that to us!”
“No, but I think Spike and Buffy are right,” Cordelia stated. “At least for now. If we’re going to get Angel out of there, it’s going to take time and probably a lot of careful planning. We have to decide what we’re going to do in the meantime. It doesn’t look like we’ll have to pay rent on this place, not since Angel managed to pay it off. As long as he doesn’t evict us.”
“The Council is paying me,” Buffy said. “I mean, I’m staying, and I’ll help, but I’m basically a volunteer at this point. Heck, I could even support Spike.”
Spike gave her a wry look. “Think I’ll pass on that generous offer, luv. I can pay my own way. Just have to find out how.”
“Why not start up Angel Investigations again?” Cordy asked, looking at Wesley. “We did okay last time he wasn’t around. With Spike and Buffy—”
Wesley began to smile. “We would be in even better shape.” He threw a warm smile at Fred. “I daresay the same could be said for having Winifred as well.”
“And Lorne?” Fred asked. “Do you think he’d help?”
“He will help,” Wesley said. “Lorne is planning on taking his time leaving Wolfram and Hart, however. I think he’d like to start something like Caritas up again, but that will take contacts and money. Lorne said he’d be happy to act as our unofficial eyes and ears.”
“Then are we all agreed?” Cordelia asked.
Wesley and Fred both nodded. Cordy glanced over at Spike, who in turn looked at Buffy. “What do you say, pet?”
“If you stay, I’m staying,” Buffy replied determinedly. “If this is what you want, I’m in.”
A smile touched Spike’s lips. “Why not?” he asked. “We’ll save a few innocents on the way to saving Angel from himself .”
Cordelia felt nothing but relief. It wasn’t going to be easy, but at least they had a direction now. They had a plan.
She felt like she had a place again, and a purpose.