entry one: I can almost taste the ink
Title: I can almost taste the ink
Entry Number: 01
Author: lynzie914
Fandom: Angel/AtS (Fred-centric, ensemble, Fred/Spike friendship or more if you squint.)
Rating:PG-13 (For talk of subject matter but nothing you would hear on the show, but still might make you squeamish.)
Genre: Supernatural/Fantasy
Spoiler Warnings: S5, post “You’re Welcome” and then goes AU.
Word Count: 3123
Fred wakes up with a gasp, forcing herself to stay lying down, forcing herself not to look around the room for monsters in the dark (even if life has proven monsters real). Instead she turned to look at the clock on her nightstand, it read slightly after three o’clock.
Not as unusual as she would like.
But bad things happened in the world, in her world, and life wasn’t a storybook, wasn’t a movie; they didn’t just disappear into the night with a kiss from the right man or enough time.
This dream was different though. It came in pieces of things she was sure she had never seen before. Half nightmare and half dream. And she remembered Cordelia…remembered her there, perching on her bed and brushing Fred’s hair out of her eyes.
It wasn’t the first time she had dreamed of her, not since Jasmine, not since Cordelia had disappeared, not since she had first seen her in Pylea through a hole in the wall.
Angel had been her champion; her savior. Both for a very long time. But Cordie had been her first friend. The first friend she had made in five years, who had reminded her of what they were.
She remembered Cordelia, looking down at her, curls in her hair, wearing white.
“You’ll take care of him,” She had said, “You’ll take care of all of them. I-I needed to know someone would do that.”
Fred hadn’t understood what she meant, but hadn’t been able to say anything out loud.
“Don’t worry, you will.” Cordelia had told her, like she could read her mind. She had placed a kiss on her forehead and that’s when the images had begun.
So many of them. So very many, blurring before her eyes in the forms of people, symbols, demons, and blood. So much blood and cries for help.
And when Fred woke gasping all she could remember was Cordelia and the color blue.
--
“What do you mean Cordie’s…She was just…”
There were endings to these sentences, Fred knew that, but they were far too final to say out loud. Far too permanent. And she refused to say any of them.
“I think what Fred is trying to say, is that none of this makes sense,” Wesley says, his voice wobbling just a little, but enough, “We all saw her yesterday, she was perfectly healthy, even the doctors said so. They wouldn’t have…they wouldn’t have let her leave the clinic if she wasn’t.”
“I know that it’s hard to understand-”
“Hard to understand is demon law,” Gunn says, “Whether or not our friend is dead and how she died, that’s easy-As long as some people haven’t suddenly decided to keep secrets again.”
“I was confused too,” Angels tells them, “I thought…I thought we were going to go get that drink, meet up with you guys, but then Cordelia started talking about how she was on a different path them me, then us, how she wasn’t meant to be here anymore, how all this was just some kind of magical day pass…And then the phone rang and it was the clinic. They told me Cordelia had died, that she never woke up at all.”
“But we all saw her.” Gunn says.
“We touched her.” Wesley says remembers hugging her, remembers feeling her warm embrace.
“Better yet, I read her and it didn’t get anything about her dying.” Lorne interjects.
“I don’t have any answers for you guys,” Angels says, pinching his nose, “I don’t know how or why, I just…Jasmine was too much for her, for anybody to handle, too powerful. She was never meant to wake up from that coma, to live the rest of her life on this plane. But she wanted me to tell you all goodbye. I do know that much. She asked me to tell you all goodbye.”
“It’s not fair.” Fred says quietly, “All they put her through and she only had one day. One day she spent it working, saving us again, and she didn’t even get to…”
The dream, the dream that felt so real, like Cordelia was with her there in the room. It was almost like a goodbye. A goodbye and a wish wrapped in one.
“Fred, if you need the day off, if anyone does…All you have to do is ask.” Angel says.
“No, I just-Well, maybe, I don’t know, working usually keeps my mind off things but that’s not the point.”
“And the point is, sugarplum? Because I do plan on taking the day off and drowning my sorrows.” Lorne asks.
“It’s just…I had this weird dream last night, with Cordelia, and I thought it was just because she was back or something, but-did anyone else have one too?”
No one answered.
“Just me and my crazy brain then,” Fred mutters.
“You’re not crazy, Fred.” Wesley assures her.
Someone was always assuring her of that.
It gets tiring after a while. Like when people ask you if you’re alright after you’ve broken your arm.
“I’m just…I’m just going to go back to the lab.” Fred says, “Work focuses me and then I’ll go home and eat ice cream and cry like Cordelia taught me to.”
She’s gone before anyone can stop her and no one comes chasing after her.
(Fred’s not surprised. She’s not the only one who lost someone. She guessed she was just tired of losing people, of not having a choice, of no goodbyes, of no chances of goodbyes, of being lost.
Fred was terribly tired of being so very lost.)
--
Spike finds her the next day, oddly timid as he enters the lab, he even knocks. (Not that he waits for an answer.)
Fred is going through paperwork, sorting through possible cases and cases to send to the CDC and ones to ignore all together. It’s busy work, but the kind of thing the boss has to do, so the people below her know what the hell there supposed to be doing and she thinks some should know what they’re supposed to be doing. Because Fred sure as hell didn’t.
(Fred hadn’t slept the night before, just cried into her pillow, but that was what make-up was for. Cordelia had taught her that too, or re-taught it to her, when she had been gone so long she had begun to forget what makeup was.)
“Hey,” Spike shuffles his feet and she glances at him before returning to her work.
Wesley and Charles had been there before, trying to get her to talk to them, to talk to her, to all share in their grief.
The healthy thing to do.
Fred wasn’t interested in being all that healthy yet. If she thought she could, she use the Senior Partners to punish The Powers That Be for what they did to her friend. Would find a way to hurt them herself, dimensional hotspots, time portals, just send fiery balls in their directions.
(Plenty of people had called Fred nice over the years, it didn’t mean she actually was.)
“Kind of busy here, Spike.” She says not looking up from her work.
“And temperamental if the rumors are true,” Spike says, “I lost count of the numbers of employees who warned me not to come in here before I, well…did it anyways.”
“If they do their damn jobs, than I have no need to yell at them.” Fred says, “Unfortunately some of them have problems learning that lesson.”
“Well, I’m a champion, so, you know, I can do my job.” Spike smiles.
“Yeah,” Fred looks up and smiles back bitterly, “And you do it so well. Been duped by any evil cowboys lately?”
“You know, I’m starting to get all the warnings now.” Spike says, “I remember you being nice.”
Fred glared up at him, her voice monotone as she spoke, people forgot so easily, that there was so much more to her than goodness and light. “Is there something you wanted, Spike?”
“I just…” He was back to shuffling again, though he was looking her in the eye which she guessed was progress, “I know about Cordelia, Angel told me, and I know we’re not as close as you and the others, and I know I didn’t know her well, but-I figured, you always did so much for me. It didn’t hurt to offer…if you ever wanted to go for a pint, to talk, to not talk, to drink so much that it makes you want to talk. I’m here. If you know, you want me.”
He got a bit more confident by the end, still almost afraid of rejection, but more confident. Like he knew maybe he could help.
Fred wasn’t sure if she wanted help.
Wasn’t sure if she wanted help, wanted to move on, wanted to find a way to move passed it, or if she just wanted to cling to it, because it reminded her of who she was and who she had always been.
She sighs deeply, looking down at the papers and back at him, “Thanks,” Fred finally says, “I’ll…think about it.”
“All I can ask.” He says. “But since I have you in a slightly better mood, mind if I ask you another question?”
“If I said no would it stop you?”
“No, definitely not,” Spike grins, “I guess I’m just wondering what you’re doing here…after everything.”
“There you asked,” Fred says, standing up with a stack of her folders, “I never promised an answer.”
“Fred,” He grabs her arm as she goes to go around him and down into the lab to distribute more work (her entire lab hates her and it only took one day), but then it happens.
Pain like she has never felt before (and Fred knows pain), her head torn open, and her body losing control, and the world is falling apart, into pieces, and all she can see is pictures. Pieces and puzzles and things that don’t make sense.
Blood. So much blood.
Bodies, lined up, arranged.
Blood, to be drank but no vampires in sight.
Just the pain of throats being slit, of the gurgle as it spilled out.
The world turning and turning around her, shifting.
And symbols.
So many symbols.
--
Fred wakes up, only she was never really asleep, just somewhere else somewhere horrible, in Spike’s arms as he holds her, leaning against the desk and trying to hold them both in place.
He’s whispering calm things in her ear; “It’ll be fine, love.” He whispers, “It’ll be over soon.” He tells her, “It all be okay, I’ll make it okay.” He promises. “It’ll be fine.” He repeats again and again.
Slowly she regains her composure; she stops shaking in his arms, stops mumbling nonsense that only makes sense to her, because she knows what she saw.
And finally she says. “Cordelia.”
The name comes out like a revelation and it kind of is.
--
Spike goes for Angel and the others, reluctant to leave her alone, but she has a glare that scares even him.
When he’s gone she takes to scribbling on her boards, trying to remember what she saw in her…vision. She hadn’t said that word out loud yet, but she knew what it was.
Fred knew what her dream with Cordelia meant now too.
She had another board for it, trying to dissect the pieces she could remember, but there was less there, just Cordelia’s worlds repeated. Just the color blue and the many things it could mean.
(Fred had already crossed tranquil off the list, as she popped three aspirin in her mouth, though it could have something to do with water, with moving, with currents, with passing, with waves. Fred did not know.)
The other board was much fuller.
The word blood repeated over and over, along with ritual sacrifice.
She just didn’t know what kind or how they combined.
Fred had made out the shape of the bodies, had worked out the cuts and angles of the slit throats in case they meant anything the best she could.
Focused and focused because soon it would all drift away or worse it would stay but it wouldn’t make sense, she wouldn’t find the answers until it was too late.
There were symbols too. And a chalice, one with different symbols and jewels but she ran out of small boards, moved on to the walls, pushed her markers harder against the paint, trying to get the symbols just right. Trying to get it all perfect.
Trying to make sense of something that was to come. Of death and destruction and a gift that was never meant for her, because she was not Cordelia, she was not the heart of the group.
She was just Winifred Burkle. The was the crazy taco lady who believed in revenge, who saw science where others saw magic, who saw lines and figures and patterns where everyone else saw fate.
This was not supposed to be her.
So she kept writing, pressing harder and harder, trying to make it all make sense, because something had too.
Fred couldn’t take much more of this.
--
The doors opened behind her, people entering her personal space, clambering in, and the sad thing is she can tell who each of them are by how they walk when danger is not involved.
“She’s writing on the walls again, not a good sign.” Charles whispers and she’s sure someone nods in agreement.
“You should have gotten us sooner.” Angels says, scowls probably.
She doesn’t turn around, just keeps writing.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was trying to keep her all together and from convulsing on the floor,” Comes Spike’s sarcastic supply, “Next time, I’ll just leave her alone and come get you right away, all might one.”
“Fred,” Wesley steps forward.
“Stop.” Fred holds up her hand, “I almost, I almost have it finished.”
She writes another symbol, one she’s sworn she’s seen before and not just swirling around in her head, and pairs it with another. Adds another gem stone to the chalice, arrows pointing out from it, deciphering the types of stones.
“Fred…”
“Just everybody shut up.” She snaps at Angel, “I’m trying to work and it’s not like I know what I’m doing and it’s not like the wall can’t be repainted, so just shut up.”
--
They listen and she finishes and maybe it takes longer than Cordie, but Cordelia had practice by the time Fred had come around, known what to expect and what to look for, what to see, to do. Had known what was important and what wasn’t.
(She had also known about the pain, the sacrifice, the toll. Fred knew about that too and she didn’t think she was ready.
Not after everything else.)
Fred capped her marker and turned around, sees Wesley and Charles studying one board and Angel studying the one with Cordelia’s name, with her words. Spike was just watching her, carefully, like maybe she would collapse again at any moment.
“I think I got it all down.” She says quietly. “Or as much as I could, it all happened so fast.”
“Cordie gave you her visions.” Angel says not looking from her white board.
“I…In the dream I think,” Fred says, watching them all stare at her, “I think-I think she wanted you still connected to the powers somehow. All of you. I don’t know why she chose me.”
“Because you’re strong, love.” Spike says, like it’s obvious.
“He’s right,” Charles says, “They need some committed to their side, no possibility of being corrupted.”
“They needed someone who could handle the pain, who had endured enough of it to be able to endure more.” Wesley says, a hint of sadness in his voice.
“They needed a champion.” Angel says finally turning to look at her.
“No,” Fred shook her head, “I’m not-I help, but I’m not-”
“You’re not that girl in that cave anymore, Fred.” Wesley says, “You’re not a victim, you’re a warrior, you have been for a very long time. Since before we ever met you, you saved yourself and you’ve saved all of us. This is just…this is you saving more people.”
“No tricks or evil cowboys needed.” Spike smiles, “So tell us what you found and I’ll go kill the bad guys.”
“I…” She took a deep breath, trying to believe the things they were saying, trying to live in the same world they lived in, “I have parts of it figured out.” She finally says.
“It’s not happening yet, we have time. And once we decipher these symbols and what the chalice means it will shed a light on everything else; Wesley that’s your department, but Charles, you work with him too, demon law is your thing now and it might be needed. Who knows what kind of a ritual this is.”
“Both our departments will be on it.” Wesley nods.
“No,” Fred says fiercely “Just the two of you.”
“Fred’s right,” Angel agrees, “For all we know we got this message because it’s someone here planning something or it’s a client, or someone that’s overly loyal to a client. Any…visions that Fred gets, they stay between all of us.”
“And Lorne.” Fred adds, “When he gets back.”
“And Lorne.” He nods.
“The alignment of the bodies seems familiar, I’m going to work on that, see what it means, if I can figure out what it means it math or in physics. With our luck someone’s trying to open a portal again.” Fred says, “Angel-”
“Go back, act natural, do my job.” He nodded.
“Yep, and Spike hit the streets or the bars or whatever won’t catch you on fire and see if you can find anything out, okay?”
“At your service, you know that.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t very nice.”
“Whoever told you I liked nice girls?” He smirks at her.
Fred rolls her eyes, and them shoos them all out, “Get to work people.”
When their leaving she hears Charles confused voice, “Okay, but when did we put Fred in charge?”
“I think she just put herself in charge.” Wesley says as he followed him down the stairs.
Fred smiles a little, and then regretted it, because of the pain it did to her head.
Turned back to her white board and went back to solving the problem, to the work.
It was what she did best after all.
She had plenty of time to freak out over the vision and what they meant for her lifespan later. Now, she had a problem to work.
“I hope you knew what you were doing, Cordie.” Fred says before attacking the board with a different colored marker.
Entry Number: 01
Author: lynzie914
Fandom: Angel/AtS (Fred-centric, ensemble, Fred/Spike friendship or more if you squint.)
Rating:PG-13 (For talk of subject matter but nothing you would hear on the show, but still might make you squeamish.)
Genre: Supernatural/Fantasy
Spoiler Warnings: S5, post “You’re Welcome” and then goes AU.
Word Count: 3123
Fred wakes up with a gasp, forcing herself to stay lying down, forcing herself not to look around the room for monsters in the dark (even if life has proven monsters real). Instead she turned to look at the clock on her nightstand, it read slightly after three o’clock.
Not as unusual as she would like.
But bad things happened in the world, in her world, and life wasn’t a storybook, wasn’t a movie; they didn’t just disappear into the night with a kiss from the right man or enough time.
This dream was different though. It came in pieces of things she was sure she had never seen before. Half nightmare and half dream. And she remembered Cordelia…remembered her there, perching on her bed and brushing Fred’s hair out of her eyes.
It wasn’t the first time she had dreamed of her, not since Jasmine, not since Cordelia had disappeared, not since she had first seen her in Pylea through a hole in the wall.
Angel had been her champion; her savior. Both for a very long time. But Cordie had been her first friend. The first friend she had made in five years, who had reminded her of what they were.
She remembered Cordelia, looking down at her, curls in her hair, wearing white.
“You’ll take care of him,” She had said, “You’ll take care of all of them. I-I needed to know someone would do that.”
Fred hadn’t understood what she meant, but hadn’t been able to say anything out loud.
“Don’t worry, you will.” Cordelia had told her, like she could read her mind. She had placed a kiss on her forehead and that’s when the images had begun.
So many of them. So very many, blurring before her eyes in the forms of people, symbols, demons, and blood. So much blood and cries for help.
And when Fred woke gasping all she could remember was Cordelia and the color blue.
--
“What do you mean Cordie’s…She was just…”
There were endings to these sentences, Fred knew that, but they were far too final to say out loud. Far too permanent. And she refused to say any of them.
“I think what Fred is trying to say, is that none of this makes sense,” Wesley says, his voice wobbling just a little, but enough, “We all saw her yesterday, she was perfectly healthy, even the doctors said so. They wouldn’t have…they wouldn’t have let her leave the clinic if she wasn’t.”
“I know that it’s hard to understand-”
“Hard to understand is demon law,” Gunn says, “Whether or not our friend is dead and how she died, that’s easy-As long as some people haven’t suddenly decided to keep secrets again.”
“I was confused too,” Angels tells them, “I thought…I thought we were going to go get that drink, meet up with you guys, but then Cordelia started talking about how she was on a different path them me, then us, how she wasn’t meant to be here anymore, how all this was just some kind of magical day pass…And then the phone rang and it was the clinic. They told me Cordelia had died, that she never woke up at all.”
“But we all saw her.” Gunn says.
“We touched her.” Wesley says remembers hugging her, remembers feeling her warm embrace.
“Better yet, I read her and it didn’t get anything about her dying.” Lorne interjects.
“I don’t have any answers for you guys,” Angels says, pinching his nose, “I don’t know how or why, I just…Jasmine was too much for her, for anybody to handle, too powerful. She was never meant to wake up from that coma, to live the rest of her life on this plane. But she wanted me to tell you all goodbye. I do know that much. She asked me to tell you all goodbye.”
“It’s not fair.” Fred says quietly, “All they put her through and she only had one day. One day she spent it working, saving us again, and she didn’t even get to…”
The dream, the dream that felt so real, like Cordelia was with her there in the room. It was almost like a goodbye. A goodbye and a wish wrapped in one.
“Fred, if you need the day off, if anyone does…All you have to do is ask.” Angel says.
“No, I just-Well, maybe, I don’t know, working usually keeps my mind off things but that’s not the point.”
“And the point is, sugarplum? Because I do plan on taking the day off and drowning my sorrows.” Lorne asks.
“It’s just…I had this weird dream last night, with Cordelia, and I thought it was just because she was back or something, but-did anyone else have one too?”
No one answered.
“Just me and my crazy brain then,” Fred mutters.
“You’re not crazy, Fred.” Wesley assures her.
Someone was always assuring her of that.
It gets tiring after a while. Like when people ask you if you’re alright after you’ve broken your arm.
“I’m just…I’m just going to go back to the lab.” Fred says, “Work focuses me and then I’ll go home and eat ice cream and cry like Cordelia taught me to.”
She’s gone before anyone can stop her and no one comes chasing after her.
(Fred’s not surprised. She’s not the only one who lost someone. She guessed she was just tired of losing people, of not having a choice, of no goodbyes, of no chances of goodbyes, of being lost.
Fred was terribly tired of being so very lost.)
--
Spike finds her the next day, oddly timid as he enters the lab, he even knocks. (Not that he waits for an answer.)
Fred is going through paperwork, sorting through possible cases and cases to send to the CDC and ones to ignore all together. It’s busy work, but the kind of thing the boss has to do, so the people below her know what the hell there supposed to be doing and she thinks some should know what they’re supposed to be doing. Because Fred sure as hell didn’t.
(Fred hadn’t slept the night before, just cried into her pillow, but that was what make-up was for. Cordelia had taught her that too, or re-taught it to her, when she had been gone so long she had begun to forget what makeup was.)
“Hey,” Spike shuffles his feet and she glances at him before returning to her work.
Wesley and Charles had been there before, trying to get her to talk to them, to talk to her, to all share in their grief.
The healthy thing to do.
Fred wasn’t interested in being all that healthy yet. If she thought she could, she use the Senior Partners to punish The Powers That Be for what they did to her friend. Would find a way to hurt them herself, dimensional hotspots, time portals, just send fiery balls in their directions.
(Plenty of people had called Fred nice over the years, it didn’t mean she actually was.)
“Kind of busy here, Spike.” She says not looking up from her work.
“And temperamental if the rumors are true,” Spike says, “I lost count of the numbers of employees who warned me not to come in here before I, well…did it anyways.”
“If they do their damn jobs, than I have no need to yell at them.” Fred says, “Unfortunately some of them have problems learning that lesson.”
“Well, I’m a champion, so, you know, I can do my job.” Spike smiles.
“Yeah,” Fred looks up and smiles back bitterly, “And you do it so well. Been duped by any evil cowboys lately?”
“You know, I’m starting to get all the warnings now.” Spike says, “I remember you being nice.”
Fred glared up at him, her voice monotone as she spoke, people forgot so easily, that there was so much more to her than goodness and light. “Is there something you wanted, Spike?”
“I just…” He was back to shuffling again, though he was looking her in the eye which she guessed was progress, “I know about Cordelia, Angel told me, and I know we’re not as close as you and the others, and I know I didn’t know her well, but-I figured, you always did so much for me. It didn’t hurt to offer…if you ever wanted to go for a pint, to talk, to not talk, to drink so much that it makes you want to talk. I’m here. If you know, you want me.”
He got a bit more confident by the end, still almost afraid of rejection, but more confident. Like he knew maybe he could help.
Fred wasn’t sure if she wanted help.
Wasn’t sure if she wanted help, wanted to move on, wanted to find a way to move passed it, or if she just wanted to cling to it, because it reminded her of who she was and who she had always been.
She sighs deeply, looking down at the papers and back at him, “Thanks,” Fred finally says, “I’ll…think about it.”
“All I can ask.” He says. “But since I have you in a slightly better mood, mind if I ask you another question?”
“If I said no would it stop you?”
“No, definitely not,” Spike grins, “I guess I’m just wondering what you’re doing here…after everything.”
“There you asked,” Fred says, standing up with a stack of her folders, “I never promised an answer.”
“Fred,” He grabs her arm as she goes to go around him and down into the lab to distribute more work (her entire lab hates her and it only took one day), but then it happens.
Pain like she has never felt before (and Fred knows pain), her head torn open, and her body losing control, and the world is falling apart, into pieces, and all she can see is pictures. Pieces and puzzles and things that don’t make sense.
Blood. So much blood.
Bodies, lined up, arranged.
Blood, to be drank but no vampires in sight.
Just the pain of throats being slit, of the gurgle as it spilled out.
The world turning and turning around her, shifting.
And symbols.
So many symbols.
--
Fred wakes up, only she was never really asleep, just somewhere else somewhere horrible, in Spike’s arms as he holds her, leaning against the desk and trying to hold them both in place.
He’s whispering calm things in her ear; “It’ll be fine, love.” He whispers, “It’ll be over soon.” He tells her, “It all be okay, I’ll make it okay.” He promises. “It’ll be fine.” He repeats again and again.
Slowly she regains her composure; she stops shaking in his arms, stops mumbling nonsense that only makes sense to her, because she knows what she saw.
And finally she says. “Cordelia.”
The name comes out like a revelation and it kind of is.
--
Spike goes for Angel and the others, reluctant to leave her alone, but she has a glare that scares even him.
When he’s gone she takes to scribbling on her boards, trying to remember what she saw in her…vision. She hadn’t said that word out loud yet, but she knew what it was.
Fred knew what her dream with Cordelia meant now too.
She had another board for it, trying to dissect the pieces she could remember, but there was less there, just Cordelia’s worlds repeated. Just the color blue and the many things it could mean.
(Fred had already crossed tranquil off the list, as she popped three aspirin in her mouth, though it could have something to do with water, with moving, with currents, with passing, with waves. Fred did not know.)
The other board was much fuller.
The word blood repeated over and over, along with ritual sacrifice.
She just didn’t know what kind or how they combined.
Fred had made out the shape of the bodies, had worked out the cuts and angles of the slit throats in case they meant anything the best she could.
Focused and focused because soon it would all drift away or worse it would stay but it wouldn’t make sense, she wouldn’t find the answers until it was too late.
There were symbols too. And a chalice, one with different symbols and jewels but she ran out of small boards, moved on to the walls, pushed her markers harder against the paint, trying to get the symbols just right. Trying to get it all perfect.
Trying to make sense of something that was to come. Of death and destruction and a gift that was never meant for her, because she was not Cordelia, she was not the heart of the group.
She was just Winifred Burkle. The was the crazy taco lady who believed in revenge, who saw science where others saw magic, who saw lines and figures and patterns where everyone else saw fate.
This was not supposed to be her.
So she kept writing, pressing harder and harder, trying to make it all make sense, because something had too.
Fred couldn’t take much more of this.
--
The doors opened behind her, people entering her personal space, clambering in, and the sad thing is she can tell who each of them are by how they walk when danger is not involved.
“She’s writing on the walls again, not a good sign.” Charles whispers and she’s sure someone nods in agreement.
“You should have gotten us sooner.” Angels says, scowls probably.
She doesn’t turn around, just keeps writing.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was trying to keep her all together and from convulsing on the floor,” Comes Spike’s sarcastic supply, “Next time, I’ll just leave her alone and come get you right away, all might one.”
“Fred,” Wesley steps forward.
“Stop.” Fred holds up her hand, “I almost, I almost have it finished.”
She writes another symbol, one she’s sworn she’s seen before and not just swirling around in her head, and pairs it with another. Adds another gem stone to the chalice, arrows pointing out from it, deciphering the types of stones.
“Fred…”
“Just everybody shut up.” She snaps at Angel, “I’m trying to work and it’s not like I know what I’m doing and it’s not like the wall can’t be repainted, so just shut up.”
--
They listen and she finishes and maybe it takes longer than Cordie, but Cordelia had practice by the time Fred had come around, known what to expect and what to look for, what to see, to do. Had known what was important and what wasn’t.
(She had also known about the pain, the sacrifice, the toll. Fred knew about that too and she didn’t think she was ready.
Not after everything else.)
Fred capped her marker and turned around, sees Wesley and Charles studying one board and Angel studying the one with Cordelia’s name, with her words. Spike was just watching her, carefully, like maybe she would collapse again at any moment.
“I think I got it all down.” She says quietly. “Or as much as I could, it all happened so fast.”
“Cordie gave you her visions.” Angel says not looking from her white board.
“I…In the dream I think,” Fred says, watching them all stare at her, “I think-I think she wanted you still connected to the powers somehow. All of you. I don’t know why she chose me.”
“Because you’re strong, love.” Spike says, like it’s obvious.
“He’s right,” Charles says, “They need some committed to their side, no possibility of being corrupted.”
“They needed someone who could handle the pain, who had endured enough of it to be able to endure more.” Wesley says, a hint of sadness in his voice.
“They needed a champion.” Angel says finally turning to look at her.
“No,” Fred shook her head, “I’m not-I help, but I’m not-”
“You’re not that girl in that cave anymore, Fred.” Wesley says, “You’re not a victim, you’re a warrior, you have been for a very long time. Since before we ever met you, you saved yourself and you’ve saved all of us. This is just…this is you saving more people.”
“No tricks or evil cowboys needed.” Spike smiles, “So tell us what you found and I’ll go kill the bad guys.”
“I…” She took a deep breath, trying to believe the things they were saying, trying to live in the same world they lived in, “I have parts of it figured out.” She finally says.
“It’s not happening yet, we have time. And once we decipher these symbols and what the chalice means it will shed a light on everything else; Wesley that’s your department, but Charles, you work with him too, demon law is your thing now and it might be needed. Who knows what kind of a ritual this is.”
“Both our departments will be on it.” Wesley nods.
“No,” Fred says fiercely “Just the two of you.”
“Fred’s right,” Angel agrees, “For all we know we got this message because it’s someone here planning something or it’s a client, or someone that’s overly loyal to a client. Any…visions that Fred gets, they stay between all of us.”
“And Lorne.” Fred adds, “When he gets back.”
“And Lorne.” He nods.
“The alignment of the bodies seems familiar, I’m going to work on that, see what it means, if I can figure out what it means it math or in physics. With our luck someone’s trying to open a portal again.” Fred says, “Angel-”
“Go back, act natural, do my job.” He nodded.
“Yep, and Spike hit the streets or the bars or whatever won’t catch you on fire and see if you can find anything out, okay?”
“At your service, you know that.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t very nice.”
“Whoever told you I liked nice girls?” He smirks at her.
Fred rolls her eyes, and them shoos them all out, “Get to work people.”
When their leaving she hears Charles confused voice, “Okay, but when did we put Fred in charge?”
“I think she just put herself in charge.” Wesley says as he followed him down the stairs.
Fred smiles a little, and then regretted it, because of the pain it did to her head.
Turned back to her white board and went back to solving the problem, to the work.
It was what she did best after all.
She had plenty of time to freak out over the vision and what they meant for her lifespan later. Now, she had a problem to work.
“I hope you knew what you were doing, Cordie.” Fred says before attacking the board with a different colored marker.