Not At All, Chapter 2
“I’ve done the best I can,” Becky explains to Cordelia. “Her wounds are healed, and Kennedy’s blood should help things along. Now her body is just recuperating. If her body wakes up, there will be no ill effects.”
“If?” Cordelia questions, lump forming in her throat. She knows all about comas, and she will slit Bella’s throat herself rather than let her live that way.
“When,” Becky says, trying to be comforting. “There’s no reason she shouldn’t wake up. The healing going on now is mental. With you and her…”
“Brother,” Cordy offers, eyes ghosting over to the sleeping boy. “Twin brother.”
Becky smiles kindly. “With you and her brother around, her mind should heal itself quickly.”
“Thank you,” Cordy says, taking Bella’s small hand in both of hers. It’s warm. She looks over at Kennedy. “And thank you, so much.”
Kennedy nods, grimacing slightly as one of the healers removes the needle and bandages her arm. She stretches it out and stands.
“Twins, you said? I’ve seen a lot of Slayers in the past ten years, but never a Slayer with a twin.”
“It’s complicated,” Cordelia offers softly. “Hey, Kennedy, you wouldn’t happen to know the date, would you?” As much time zone jumping as she does, it is hard to keep track of such things.
“June 2nd,” Kennedy says, rolling down her sleeve and then gently brushing some blonde hair out of Bella’s face.
Cordelia closes her eyes. Those Powers certainly do have a sense of humor. Her mind flashes with what happens on this date in another reality, twin pairs of blue eyes staring into a hospital bassinet in wonder.
“What’s wrong?” Kennedy questions.
“Irony,” Cordelia sighs, flashing one of those mega-watt smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Henry begins to whimper, then cries out loudly in his sleep. Cordelia drops Bella’s hand and rushes to him, Kennedy close behind her. He awakens with a burst of tears, sitting up quickly.
Cordelia grabs for him, pulling him in close, resting his head on her chest as he sobs.
“Shh… Shh…” she soothes. “What did you see, baby? What did you see?”
“They’re coming,” he gasps, red-gold head buried into her. “They’re coming for us, Cordy. They won’t stop.”
“Hush, now, baby,” Cordy whispers, rubbing his back. “I got you. I got you.”
“They won’t stop ‘til we’re dead.”
“Or they are,” Cordy mumbles into his hair, smoothing it back as she rocks him.
“Cordy?” the little boy questions.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Is Bella…?”
“Right here, baby,” she assures him, setting him on the ground and directing him towards his sister.
As the boy snuggles up alongside his sister, Cordy closes her eyes against the onslaught of images from that other world, that other day.
“Nightmare?” Kennedy questions from beside her as Henry settles in.
Cordelia shakes her head. “Worse. Prophetic dream.”
Kennedy’s brow wrinkles. “Like a Slayer?”
“Yes, but different. He gets them instead of Bella. And with more frequency. It’s more direct. Bella calls him a ‘dream-walker’.”
“Cordelia, he said you were being followed,” Kennedy says slowly. “Were you just in London?”
Cordy nods.
“And Brussels before that? Amsterdam? Berlin? Warsaw? Minsk?”
Cordy continues to nod.
“Were you in St. Petersburg three months ago?”
“Yeah, and it was frickin’ cold.”
Kennedy lets a small grin escape. “They’re tracking you.”
“Negative. They’re tracking them,” Cordy says, gesturing to the twins curled together on the bed. “I’m just the guardian.”
***
Both Angel and Buffy are pretending to sleep, curled together on their bed, but neither is actually dreaming and both know it. They’re both thinking of the Others. Angel finally pulls away, slipping a shirt on and leaving the room. Barefoot, he makes his way to the infirmary and pushes the door open silently, peeking in at its occupants in that stalkerish way of his Cordy used to tease him about.
The girl sleeps, her breathing and heartbeat finally regular, bandages covering the rapidly healing wounds. The boy, her brother judging by his smell, is tucked in beside her, hand searching for her free one in sleep. Cordy keeps silent vigil at their side from a chair, legs pulled up under her as she watches them. She looks exactly the same as the day she pressed her lips to his and vanished from his life. A price of immortality with which Angel is all too familiar.
“I know you’re there,” she says softly. “I’ve been able to sense you since long before I was a Higher Being.”
She doesn’t turn her eyes to him, doesn’t acknowledge him in any way besides her voice, but his unbeating heart constricts at the sound of it.
“I thought you were dead. I laid your body in the ground…” He’s surprised at the way his throat constricts, his eyes prick, even ten years later.
“I am dead, Angel,” she says, back still turned to him. “Any life I’ve ever had outside of these two is over, done. The Powers were kind enough to give me a goodbye, to get my guy back on track.”
She nearly dusts him with a possessive pronoun.
“Cordelia,” he says, and his pain, his love drips off every syllable.
“What do you want me to say, Angel?”
“I want you to explain to me how you can claim to love me and spend every day of the last ten years walking this earth without even telling me.”
“Would that’ve made it easier, Angel?” Cordy asks, finally turning to face him, anger lacing her voice in a way that is oh-so-familiar to him. “’Hey, Angel, I’m dying, but I’m still gonna be up walkin’ around, never to see you again.’ Hello, Mr. McBroodsalot, you would have never let that happen. And when I left anyway, you would have never recovered.”
“And I’ve recovered now?” Angel questions.
“Yes,” Cordy says firmly. “You’re with Buffy. You’ve kept fighting, kept living.”
“Not through lack of trying,” Angel mutters under his breath, entering the room and leaning against the now-closed door.
“Angel,” she says, voice softening. “There are very few things in this world that would’ve made me give up my fight to stay at your side. But Bella and Henry… they make that list.”
“You knew,” he says. “You knew as we said goodbye that you were going to them.”
“They were being born in that very moment,” she admits easily.
He still looks hurt, almost pouty. It pulls at her heart.
“If you knew what I knew about them, Angel, you would understand.”
He meets her eyes at that, those beautiful hazel-brown eyes. “Enlighten me.”
She sighs, standing, coming to his side. She grabs his hand, and it takes all of his willpower not to pull her into his arms right then and there, after ten years of not feeling her skin, hearing her heartbeat… She pulls him over to one of the empty beds, makes him sit. She sits beside him, hand still closed around his.
“There are other worlds, other realities. I’m not talking dimensions; I’m talking totally separate realities. In lots of them, you and me, the Scoobies, we all play important, but different, roles in their lives. In some, we never meet them. In some, they’re never born. But there’s one, one in particular…” She closes her eyes.
“What, Cordy?”
“It’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. It’s not so much different from here. In fact, it shares the same history until about 2001. But there’s no Connor, no Holtz, no Quar-toth. No ascension, no Jasmine, no coma… None of that. And on February 4th, 2004, Bella and Henry are born. That’s the same in every reality. Six weeks later, their mother brings them to the Hyperion to be protected. They never leave. At least, not until they’re much older.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, that in that reality… We raise them.”
“We… the team? Or we… us?”
She points to herself. “Mommy.” She points to him. “Daddy.”
The emotion hits him like Mack truck. To watch children grow, hear them call him ‘Daddy’, it’s something he was robbed of with Connor. He was robbed of everything with Connor.
“It’s so beautiful, Angel,” she whispers. He can sense she’s holding something back.
“There’s more,” he prods.
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “August 20th, 2006 - your heart starts beating again. April 12th, 2008 - we’re married in a daylight service. June 2nd, 2014…” she pauses, steadying her breath. Her heartbeat (so odd that she has one even though she’s dead) speeds up. She repeats herself. “June 2nd, 2014 - Declan Doyle Chase is born.”
The final revelation has him on his feet, dropping her hand.
“That… That’s today.”
Cordy nods.
“Our… our son? Half me, half you.”
She nods again, fighting the onslaught of memories that are not her own, a life that is not hers. He looks over his shoulder at the sleeping twins.
“Why are you here? Why are you here, today?”
Cordy smiles tightly and repeats her answer to Kennedy. “Irony?”
His stern look tells her that that won’t cut it.
“It wasn’t planned, Angel. In fact, I tried my damnedest for this not to happen.”
“So why?”
“Because I have to protect them.”
“From what?”
“Everything that’s chasing them.”
“Which is?”
“Pretty much anything remotely evil,” she says, trying to sound flippant.
“Wolfram & Hart, ‘Abd al-Hamid, Xui, Rojas, Afolabi. They’re all tracking you.”
“Those are the big guns, yeah.”
“And the little ones?”
“Every small time demon crime lord trying to break into the majors.”
“Why?”
“’Cause we’re all so damn cute,” she says, sarcasm tracing her words.
He narrows a frown at her.
“Prophecy.”
Angel curses.
“A Slayer in halves. Pretty much a death knell for anything that goes bump in the night, no matter how big and bad it thinks it is. Or anything trying to stop some big bad, if they fall into the wrong hands. Slayers aren’t necessarily incorruptible.”
“How have you survived this long?”
“Well, half of the underworld wants them dead, the other half wants them alive. So they tend to fight themselves while trying to find us, which helps. Plus my amazing charm and good looks,” she smirks.
With that tease, that smile, the old Cordy is there, however briefly, and Angel’s dead heart throbs with the ache of it.
“We’ve never stayed in one place longer than a week. In their entire lives. Well, unless you count the handful of twenty day voyages at sea.” She pauses, turning serious. “It’s getting harder, though. You saw us today, Angel, saw her. Some low-level Wolfram & Hart vamps nearly took my baby girl from me. You were my final sanctuary.”
“You’ll be safe here,” he promises, though he knows his words are false.
“No, we won’t,” she calls him on it. “I doubt even a castle full of Slayers can hold indefinitely against the combined and concentrated forces of the entire underworld. And I won’t put that many lives at risk, not when those Slayers can be doing something else, something for the whole world. We stay as long as it takes until Bella recovers, then we disappear again.”
He feels the sudden urge to swear that he’ll go with her, that he’ll follow her everywhere and anywhere, but it gets caught in his throat. Instead, they remain in silence, staring at each other.
“You should get a shower.” Great work, Angel, you see the woman you love for the first time in a decade and you’re already telling her she smells.
But Cordy doesn’t seem insulted, just drifts her eyes over to the twins.
“I’ll watch them,” he insists. “They’ll be safe for five minutes.”
Cordy raises her eyebrow.
“Alright, more like twenty from what I remember, but I’ll watch them.”
“If they wake up and I’m not here…”
“I’ll knock them unconscious before they can even realize.”
Cordelia’s hands go to her hips. “That is not even funny.”
“Go, shower.”
She nods, acquiescing.
“You can use what used to be Dawn’s room.”
She makes a face. “So, Dawn and Xander? Really?”
***
Henry wakes soon after Cordelia leaves. He blinks a few times in the low light before pushing himself up and away from his sister. He sits up, swinging his legs off the bed, and then notices Angel.
“Hi,” he says, yawning and rubbing sleep out of his blue eyes. His red-gold hair needs a cut and is sticking up at all angles.
“Hi,” Angel says from the chair next to the bed, not a foot away from the boy. Henry seems unfazed by the proximity of a stranger. “I’m Angel.”
“I know,” Henry shrugs. “You’re a vampire.”
“And you’re not afraid of me?”
“Nope. You’ve got a soul. If I were scared, I’d’ve already had this out,” the boy explains, fishing a small stake from his grimy jean pocket. He twirls it idly, which disturbs Angel a little.
“Oh, so Cordelia told you about me,” he says warily, keeping his eyes on the stake.
“Nope. I dreamed you.”
“Dreamed me?” Angel questions, confused.
“Yeah. I dream stuff. Didn’t my mom tell you about me?”
“Your… mom?”
“Yeah, Cordy. She doesn’t like us to call her ‘mom’, ‘cause she says we had a mom and it’s not fair to her. But, she is. Our mom, I mean.”
“You don’t remember your birth mother?”
“Well, sure. Little bits,” Henry admits. “We were real little when she died. Cordy says she was protecting us.”
Sacrificing herself to let her children live. Angel knows a little about that.
Henry’s kicking bare feet brush against Angel’s hands and he freezes.
“Hey, you’re cold.”
Angel gives him a funny look.
“Well, duh,” Henry says, shaking his head with a little grin. “You’re a vampire. I’ve just never been so close to a vampire without all the ‘grrr’ and the biting.”
Angel isn’t exactly sure what to do with that, but he is thankfully saved by the slowly opening door behind him. Buffy knocks gently to announce her entrance.
“Hello,” Henry calls, leaning to the side so he can see past Angel.
Buffy is taken aback to find one of the kids awake. “Oh, hi,” she manages with a smile.
“Buffy, this is Henry,” Angel introduces, motioning for her to join them. “Henry, this is Buffy.”
“Your girlfriend,” Henry supplies. “Henry McAlister. Nice to meet you.”
Buffy looks to Angel, who shakes his head.
“Did Cordelia tell you about us?” Buffy questions.
“No,” Angel answers for Henry. “He dreamed it.”
“He….”
“Dreamed it,” Henry nods.
“Okay… Angel, where’s Cordy?”
“Taking a shower in Dawn’s room,” Angel answers. “I told her I’d look out for the kids.”
“Do you guys have a shower I can use?” Henry says, sniffing his shirt. “And maybe some clothes?”
Buffy smiles kindly. “Sure. Angel, why don’t you…”
“I promised I’d stay here,” Angel interrupts. “I should stay with Bella. He should be okay in our room. Can you take him?”
Buffy wrinkles her brow. The unconscious one would really be better for her to handle, but she nods, offering her hand to Henry.
“It was nice to meet you, Angel,” Henry calls over his shoulder.
“If?” Cordelia questions, lump forming in her throat. She knows all about comas, and she will slit Bella’s throat herself rather than let her live that way.
“When,” Becky says, trying to be comforting. “There’s no reason she shouldn’t wake up. The healing going on now is mental. With you and her…”
“Brother,” Cordy offers, eyes ghosting over to the sleeping boy. “Twin brother.”
Becky smiles kindly. “With you and her brother around, her mind should heal itself quickly.”
“Thank you,” Cordy says, taking Bella’s small hand in both of hers. It’s warm. She looks over at Kennedy. “And thank you, so much.”
Kennedy nods, grimacing slightly as one of the healers removes the needle and bandages her arm. She stretches it out and stands.
“Twins, you said? I’ve seen a lot of Slayers in the past ten years, but never a Slayer with a twin.”
“It’s complicated,” Cordelia offers softly. “Hey, Kennedy, you wouldn’t happen to know the date, would you?” As much time zone jumping as she does, it is hard to keep track of such things.
“June 2nd,” Kennedy says, rolling down her sleeve and then gently brushing some blonde hair out of Bella’s face.
Cordelia closes her eyes. Those Powers certainly do have a sense of humor. Her mind flashes with what happens on this date in another reality, twin pairs of blue eyes staring into a hospital bassinet in wonder.
“What’s wrong?” Kennedy questions.
“Irony,” Cordelia sighs, flashing one of those mega-watt smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Henry begins to whimper, then cries out loudly in his sleep. Cordelia drops Bella’s hand and rushes to him, Kennedy close behind her. He awakens with a burst of tears, sitting up quickly.
Cordelia grabs for him, pulling him in close, resting his head on her chest as he sobs.
“Shh… Shh…” she soothes. “What did you see, baby? What did you see?”
“They’re coming,” he gasps, red-gold head buried into her. “They’re coming for us, Cordy. They won’t stop.”
“Hush, now, baby,” Cordy whispers, rubbing his back. “I got you. I got you.”
“They won’t stop ‘til we’re dead.”
“Or they are,” Cordy mumbles into his hair, smoothing it back as she rocks him.
“Cordy?” the little boy questions.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Is Bella…?”
“Right here, baby,” she assures him, setting him on the ground and directing him towards his sister.
As the boy snuggles up alongside his sister, Cordy closes her eyes against the onslaught of images from that other world, that other day.
“Nightmare?” Kennedy questions from beside her as Henry settles in.
Cordelia shakes her head. “Worse. Prophetic dream.”
Kennedy’s brow wrinkles. “Like a Slayer?”
“Yes, but different. He gets them instead of Bella. And with more frequency. It’s more direct. Bella calls him a ‘dream-walker’.”
“Cordelia, he said you were being followed,” Kennedy says slowly. “Were you just in London?”
Cordy nods.
“And Brussels before that? Amsterdam? Berlin? Warsaw? Minsk?”
Cordy continues to nod.
“Were you in St. Petersburg three months ago?”
“Yeah, and it was frickin’ cold.”
Kennedy lets a small grin escape. “They’re tracking you.”
“Negative. They’re tracking them,” Cordy says, gesturing to the twins curled together on the bed. “I’m just the guardian.”
***
Both Angel and Buffy are pretending to sleep, curled together on their bed, but neither is actually dreaming and both know it. They’re both thinking of the Others. Angel finally pulls away, slipping a shirt on and leaving the room. Barefoot, he makes his way to the infirmary and pushes the door open silently, peeking in at its occupants in that stalkerish way of his Cordy used to tease him about.
The girl sleeps, her breathing and heartbeat finally regular, bandages covering the rapidly healing wounds. The boy, her brother judging by his smell, is tucked in beside her, hand searching for her free one in sleep. Cordy keeps silent vigil at their side from a chair, legs pulled up under her as she watches them. She looks exactly the same as the day she pressed her lips to his and vanished from his life. A price of immortality with which Angel is all too familiar.
“I know you’re there,” she says softly. “I’ve been able to sense you since long before I was a Higher Being.”
She doesn’t turn her eyes to him, doesn’t acknowledge him in any way besides her voice, but his unbeating heart constricts at the sound of it.
“I thought you were dead. I laid your body in the ground…” He’s surprised at the way his throat constricts, his eyes prick, even ten years later.
“I am dead, Angel,” she says, back still turned to him. “Any life I’ve ever had outside of these two is over, done. The Powers were kind enough to give me a goodbye, to get my guy back on track.”
She nearly dusts him with a possessive pronoun.
“Cordelia,” he says, and his pain, his love drips off every syllable.
“What do you want me to say, Angel?”
“I want you to explain to me how you can claim to love me and spend every day of the last ten years walking this earth without even telling me.”
“Would that’ve made it easier, Angel?” Cordy asks, finally turning to face him, anger lacing her voice in a way that is oh-so-familiar to him. “’Hey, Angel, I’m dying, but I’m still gonna be up walkin’ around, never to see you again.’ Hello, Mr. McBroodsalot, you would have never let that happen. And when I left anyway, you would have never recovered.”
“And I’ve recovered now?” Angel questions.
“Yes,” Cordy says firmly. “You’re with Buffy. You’ve kept fighting, kept living.”
“Not through lack of trying,” Angel mutters under his breath, entering the room and leaning against the now-closed door.
“Angel,” she says, voice softening. “There are very few things in this world that would’ve made me give up my fight to stay at your side. But Bella and Henry… they make that list.”
“You knew,” he says. “You knew as we said goodbye that you were going to them.”
“They were being born in that very moment,” she admits easily.
He still looks hurt, almost pouty. It pulls at her heart.
“If you knew what I knew about them, Angel, you would understand.”
He meets her eyes at that, those beautiful hazel-brown eyes. “Enlighten me.”
She sighs, standing, coming to his side. She grabs his hand, and it takes all of his willpower not to pull her into his arms right then and there, after ten years of not feeling her skin, hearing her heartbeat… She pulls him over to one of the empty beds, makes him sit. She sits beside him, hand still closed around his.
“There are other worlds, other realities. I’m not talking dimensions; I’m talking totally separate realities. In lots of them, you and me, the Scoobies, we all play important, but different, roles in their lives. In some, we never meet them. In some, they’re never born. But there’s one, one in particular…” She closes her eyes.
“What, Cordy?”
“It’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. It’s not so much different from here. In fact, it shares the same history until about 2001. But there’s no Connor, no Holtz, no Quar-toth. No ascension, no Jasmine, no coma… None of that. And on February 4th, 2004, Bella and Henry are born. That’s the same in every reality. Six weeks later, their mother brings them to the Hyperion to be protected. They never leave. At least, not until they’re much older.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, that in that reality… We raise them.”
“We… the team? Or we… us?”
She points to herself. “Mommy.” She points to him. “Daddy.”
The emotion hits him like Mack truck. To watch children grow, hear them call him ‘Daddy’, it’s something he was robbed of with Connor. He was robbed of everything with Connor.
“It’s so beautiful, Angel,” she whispers. He can sense she’s holding something back.
“There’s more,” he prods.
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “August 20th, 2006 - your heart starts beating again. April 12th, 2008 - we’re married in a daylight service. June 2nd, 2014…” she pauses, steadying her breath. Her heartbeat (so odd that she has one even though she’s dead) speeds up. She repeats herself. “June 2nd, 2014 - Declan Doyle Chase is born.”
The final revelation has him on his feet, dropping her hand.
“That… That’s today.”
Cordy nods.
“Our… our son? Half me, half you.”
She nods again, fighting the onslaught of memories that are not her own, a life that is not hers. He looks over his shoulder at the sleeping twins.
“Why are you here? Why are you here, today?”
Cordy smiles tightly and repeats her answer to Kennedy. “Irony?”
His stern look tells her that that won’t cut it.
“It wasn’t planned, Angel. In fact, I tried my damnedest for this not to happen.”
“So why?”
“Because I have to protect them.”
“From what?”
“Everything that’s chasing them.”
“Which is?”
“Pretty much anything remotely evil,” she says, trying to sound flippant.
“Wolfram & Hart, ‘Abd al-Hamid, Xui, Rojas, Afolabi. They’re all tracking you.”
“Those are the big guns, yeah.”
“And the little ones?”
“Every small time demon crime lord trying to break into the majors.”
“Why?”
“’Cause we’re all so damn cute,” she says, sarcasm tracing her words.
He narrows a frown at her.
“Prophecy.”
Angel curses.
“A Slayer in halves. Pretty much a death knell for anything that goes bump in the night, no matter how big and bad it thinks it is. Or anything trying to stop some big bad, if they fall into the wrong hands. Slayers aren’t necessarily incorruptible.”
“How have you survived this long?”
“Well, half of the underworld wants them dead, the other half wants them alive. So they tend to fight themselves while trying to find us, which helps. Plus my amazing charm and good looks,” she smirks.
With that tease, that smile, the old Cordy is there, however briefly, and Angel’s dead heart throbs with the ache of it.
“We’ve never stayed in one place longer than a week. In their entire lives. Well, unless you count the handful of twenty day voyages at sea.” She pauses, turning serious. “It’s getting harder, though. You saw us today, Angel, saw her. Some low-level Wolfram & Hart vamps nearly took my baby girl from me. You were my final sanctuary.”
“You’ll be safe here,” he promises, though he knows his words are false.
“No, we won’t,” she calls him on it. “I doubt even a castle full of Slayers can hold indefinitely against the combined and concentrated forces of the entire underworld. And I won’t put that many lives at risk, not when those Slayers can be doing something else, something for the whole world. We stay as long as it takes until Bella recovers, then we disappear again.”
He feels the sudden urge to swear that he’ll go with her, that he’ll follow her everywhere and anywhere, but it gets caught in his throat. Instead, they remain in silence, staring at each other.
“You should get a shower.” Great work, Angel, you see the woman you love for the first time in a decade and you’re already telling her she smells.
But Cordy doesn’t seem insulted, just drifts her eyes over to the twins.
“I’ll watch them,” he insists. “They’ll be safe for five minutes.”
Cordy raises her eyebrow.
“Alright, more like twenty from what I remember, but I’ll watch them.”
“If they wake up and I’m not here…”
“I’ll knock them unconscious before they can even realize.”
Cordelia’s hands go to her hips. “That is not even funny.”
“Go, shower.”
She nods, acquiescing.
“You can use what used to be Dawn’s room.”
She makes a face. “So, Dawn and Xander? Really?”
***
Henry wakes soon after Cordelia leaves. He blinks a few times in the low light before pushing himself up and away from his sister. He sits up, swinging his legs off the bed, and then notices Angel.
“Hi,” he says, yawning and rubbing sleep out of his blue eyes. His red-gold hair needs a cut and is sticking up at all angles.
“Hi,” Angel says from the chair next to the bed, not a foot away from the boy. Henry seems unfazed by the proximity of a stranger. “I’m Angel.”
“I know,” Henry shrugs. “You’re a vampire.”
“And you’re not afraid of me?”
“Nope. You’ve got a soul. If I were scared, I’d’ve already had this out,” the boy explains, fishing a small stake from his grimy jean pocket. He twirls it idly, which disturbs Angel a little.
“Oh, so Cordelia told you about me,” he says warily, keeping his eyes on the stake.
“Nope. I dreamed you.”
“Dreamed me?” Angel questions, confused.
“Yeah. I dream stuff. Didn’t my mom tell you about me?”
“Your… mom?”
“Yeah, Cordy. She doesn’t like us to call her ‘mom’, ‘cause she says we had a mom and it’s not fair to her. But, she is. Our mom, I mean.”
“You don’t remember your birth mother?”
“Well, sure. Little bits,” Henry admits. “We were real little when she died. Cordy says she was protecting us.”
Sacrificing herself to let her children live. Angel knows a little about that.
Henry’s kicking bare feet brush against Angel’s hands and he freezes.
“Hey, you’re cold.”
Angel gives him a funny look.
“Well, duh,” Henry says, shaking his head with a little grin. “You’re a vampire. I’ve just never been so close to a vampire without all the ‘grrr’ and the biting.”
Angel isn’t exactly sure what to do with that, but he is thankfully saved by the slowly opening door behind him. Buffy knocks gently to announce her entrance.
“Hello,” Henry calls, leaning to the side so he can see past Angel.
Buffy is taken aback to find one of the kids awake. “Oh, hi,” she manages with a smile.
“Buffy, this is Henry,” Angel introduces, motioning for her to join them. “Henry, this is Buffy.”
“Your girlfriend,” Henry supplies. “Henry McAlister. Nice to meet you.”
Buffy looks to Angel, who shakes his head.
“Did Cordelia tell you about us?” Buffy questions.
“No,” Angel answers for Henry. “He dreamed it.”
“He….”
“Dreamed it,” Henry nods.
“Okay… Angel, where’s Cordy?”
“Taking a shower in Dawn’s room,” Angel answers. “I told her I’d look out for the kids.”
“Do you guys have a shower I can use?” Henry says, sniffing his shirt. “And maybe some clothes?”
Buffy smiles kindly. “Sure. Angel, why don’t you…”
“I promised I’d stay here,” Angel interrupts. “I should stay with Bella. He should be okay in our room. Can you take him?”
Buffy wrinkles her brow. The unconscious one would really be better for her to handle, but she nods, offering her hand to Henry.
“It was nice to meet you, Angel,” Henry calls over his shoulder.