#
When Cordelia Chase was on the warpath, wise men - and demons - ran for cover. Unfortunately for Wesley, she had him cornered. And Angel was backing her up.

"Spill, Wes. Giles may refuse to tell me anything, 'cause he knows I won't thwap him, but you're not running the cardio risk-a-thon. I've got no hesitation about playing dirty if I have to."

They were in the conference room, pushing around the remnants of Thai delivery that were scattered across the polished wooden table.

Wesley looked uncomfortable about more than her threat. "I -- we believe that your, ah, ability may be...expanding beyond the direct connection to the powers that be."

"What?" Cordelia hadn't been expecting that. Prophesies, yeah. Dire portents, fine. But not that. "What do you mean, 'expanding'?"

"Your ability to see events outside of Los Angeles," Angel said quietly. "Giles' heart attack, the vampires on the Fourth."

"But there hasn't been anything since then," she protested.

"It's only been two weeks," Wesley replied. "We don't know... How long did your ah, did Doyle carry this ability?"

Cordelia looked at Angel, who did some quick calculations. "A couple of years before he met us, at most. And after that...."

"See?" Cordelia interrupted, not wanting to be reminded of how little time they'd had with Doyle. "Way more time." She frowned. "You think maybe because I'm all human, it's different?"

Now Wesley hedged. "Or, it may have been the result of the...incident..."

Like Angel's refusal to say Doyle's name, the entire Scroll case had come to be referred to by all three of them merely as 'the incident."

"The brain's a pretty confusing thing," Angel said, seeing where Wesley was leading them. "Whatever they did to allow you to receive the visions, it may have had unexpected repercussions."

"Gee. Way to go with the comforting thoughts, boss." Cordelia throw herself onto the sofa, and pouted up at her friends. "This so, completely sucks. You know that, don't you?

#
Buffy looked up from the table where Giles had spread out the much-abused map of Sunnydale. Smoothing out an area where they'd taped it back together, she looked at Xander.

"Remember, track and tag. No heroics."

"Yes, captain, oh my captain!" Xander mock-saluted, then grinned. "Don't worry, I practiced enough on Oz to make me a pretty good shot with this thing." He hefted the tranq gun easily, and headed out the door. "Tell An I'll be home for breakfast."

"Those two kids scare me sometimes," Buffy said to her Watcher.

"Only sometimes?" He was bemused, but distracted.

"What? You think I should have sent someone out with him?"

He put down the papers he had been studying and shook his head. "No, I think your plan is quite right. Whatever this thing is, it hasn't been attacking people, only frightening them somewhat. With that in mind, an assault might do more harm than good. I'm not quite sure I want to know how you convinced the vet to give you so many of those pet identifyer tags, however."

"Will and Tara," she said smugly. "Tara's way known to the local ASPCA - she does volunteer work there, and they swear she's like magic with the more unruly strays."

"Indeed." Amusement sparkled in his eyes, matching the grin on her face.

Watching the way Angel, Wesley and Cordelia worked together over the Fourth of July had gotten Buffy to thinking. Up until then, she had assumed that she was the only one in her position - Chosen, and helpers. So she'd just been making the rules up as she went along. But just because you were the first, didn't mean you were the only. And it didn't mean your way was always the best. Ugly thought. But then... Angel had been able to deal with Faith, when everyone else had failed. When she, Buffy, had failed. So... live and learn. And that meant adapting. She may have been the Chosen One, the Slayer, but that didn't mean it was all on her shoulders. Giles was more than just a researcher - he had contacts everywhere, connections none of them could make in a hundred years. Use them. Xander was sneaky, and knew this town better than the back of his hand. So use that. Riley could hold his own against almost every vampire out there, physically. Willow and Tara were getting better and better with their spells, different kind of stuff than what Giles did. Use it.

She wasn't alone. But she was the general. And that meant using them wisely.

And she was discovering that sending friends out to battle was far more frightening than going out to die yourself.

"And speaking of which..." She advanced on her Watcher just as he was about to lift a donut to his mouth, snagging it out of his grasp.

"Wha-"

"You weren't even paying attention to what you were eating, were you?" She tsk'd, replacing it in the box. "And I know for a fact that you didn't sleep last night. Cordelia was right, you really do have a death wish, don't you? We go out fighting, not...not whomped by our own bodies. That's just stupid, Giles. And you're not stupid. Okay, not most of the time."

"I appreciate the sentiment," he said dryly. "Would it reassure you that I had a bowl of high-fiber cereal for breakfast, and in fact got in both a four hour nap and a quick job this morning?"

"Better. But not -"

She was interrupted by the slamming open of the front door. Tara stood there, out of breath. "Trouble. Something... out by the old... elementary school. Willow and Riley are trying to hold it off until...you get there," she gasped out.

"I'm on it," Buffy said grimly, grabbing a small hand axe and tucking it into her belt as she ran.

"So much for a quiet week," Giles said regretfully. "Come on," he said to Tara. "We'll drive back, see if we can't be of some aid as well."

#
It was a Kit'si'plinith demon - smarter than the average demon, which was why none of the others had encountered it before.

"It must have been remarkably hungry," Giles said afterward, while they were washing and bandaging various cuts. "Otherwise it would never have tried to feed in an area where a Slayer was known to be."

"Well, he won't be feeding anywhere now," Xander said, then winced as Anya's hands were a little too rough on the slash across his forearm. The Kit'si'plinith may have been smart, but it also had four arms, each with a full compliment of razor-sharp fingers, that gave it a physical edge - no pun intended - as well.

"She," Giles corrected. "I'm quite certain it was a female."

"Great, then next time, let the female take care of the female, okay?" Buffy's tone was fierce. The moment Giles had put himself between her and the downstroke of one of those long, sharp arms, her heart had almost stopped. "If you get yourself killed, then who's going to identify the demons, huh? If I can remember to ask for help, then you've got to remember to be here to give it, deal?"

Before Giles could respond, the phone rang. Willow, who was nearest, picked it up. "Giles household. Oh, hi Cordelia. No, he's here, hang on a sec -" and she handed the phone to Giles, careful not to let the cord hit anyone as it was being passed.

"Hello, Cordelia. What can I - yes, we're fine. A few scrapes and bruises, but -" at that moment, Buffy pressed down on the cut, and he hissed in pain. "No. Cordelia, I'm fine. Yes. No I didn't - I believe you interrupted Buffy in the midst of that exact speech, yes." He listened for a while, then laughed ruefully. "No-one would be more pleased by that than I, I assure you.

Now go back to sleep."

He handed the phone back to Willow for her to hang it up. "Vision central?" she asked.

Giles nodded. "Apparently so. She would have called earlier, but it took her a while to decipher the who and the where. She didn't recognize the area."

"She wouldn't have," Willow agreed. "They've redone the whole playground since we went there."

"So, she call you often?" Buffy asked.

"When she feels that there may be a problem," he said. "And occasionally merely to harass me on my 'deathwish habits.' I believe I almost preferred it when none of you took any notice whatsoever of my daily routine."

Buffy started to take offense, but noted the faint smile in his eyes and around his mouth, and subsided. Although a faint suspicion ticked at the back of her brain that it wasn't her mother-henning he was quite so chuffed about...

#
"I have to admit, it does all look quite attractive." Wesley's voice was dubious, despite the wording. Cordelia just rolled her eyes, and tugged her co-worker on by the arm. "Come on. We're already late!"

The street was bordered on either side by storefronts and three- and four-story apartment buildings, almost all of which were boarded up. At any other time, it would be a place to avoid, a place where even the cops were uneasy about patrolling. Los Angeles' worst legacy. But most of the streetlights still worked, and tonight they were supplemented this evening by strands upon strands of brightly colored party lights, candlelit lanterns, and three widely-spaced charcoal burners from which the smell of cooking meat was rising. Gunn was manning one grill, easy to spot over the heads of the kids who were gathered around him. Wesley counted an even dozen, just in that one location.

"I hadn't realized there were so many," he admitted.

"They're not all from our group." The new voice was Jonnie, one of Gunn's people. "A bunch of them live in the area - that's the point of a block party, to get to know your neighbors."

"And give good PR," Cordelia added. "Cause if what Gunn's been telling Angel is even half true, these are people who seriously need our help. Even if they can't pay," she added sadly.

Just then, someone turned up a radio, and the strains of Latino dance music filled the night air, causing teenagers, and not a few adults, to abandon their seats to dance in a cleared-off space in the middle of the street. With the reduced crowd, Cordelia could now see Angel seated with a few other adults at a badly-battered picnic table. He was intent on what an older man was saying, but Cordelia could see from the way he was holding himself that he was still hurting. She frowned, the party mood momentarily broken. They'd had two serious fights since Sunnydale, and those scrapes had healed up just like normal. But for some reason, the wounds he'd gotten from that lizard-thing weren't getting better.

Not that Angel would ever admit it, natch. The vampire could be just as annoyingly macho bullheaded as any human male...

"Cordelia."

The soft voice at her elbow made her jump. "Oh. Stephen. Hi." She didn't give her usual complaint about the stealthy sneaky walks of vampires. Angel could accept the teasing. Stephen was another story entirely. In more ways than one.

He offered her a soda, their fingers brushing faintly as she took it from him. They were cool, and slightly clammy. "You need to eat," she told him gently. His dark brown eyes met hers, the pain that had been in them since he woke up after the change still as overpowering as ever. "I can't," he said, just as gently. Then he walked away, a slight, upright figure in jeans, sneakers, and a white button down shirt fastened around the neck with a clerical collar.

It had been a cruel joke on the part of his now-dusted sire, to turn a priest. What nobody had expected was that Stephen's vocation remained, even with the vampire residing in the body. It wasn't a battle like Angel's, where two beings fought for the space of one - Stephen was fully a vampire... but one drawn helplessly to God's service. He would not feed on the living - but neither could he walk into the dawn, for that would be suicide, and a sin as well. Neither would he perform his services, feeling unclean. He spent his time with the street people, protecting them as best he could, retreating to Angel's apartment when the need for blood became too much. He would take only enough animal blood to stay alive, and nothing more.

Wesley had never encountered anything like it before, nor had Angel. They could give him no answers, only what aid and support he would accept. The general feeling was that Stephen would die, again, before the end of the summer, most likely at the hands of other demons.

"It's not fair," Cordelia whispered to anyone who was listening, feeling tears press up against her eyelids. But then, very little in life was fair. She knew that, firsthand.

A happy cry broke her from her brooding, and she came alert just in time to grab up the squirming pile of kid who had launched herself in Cordelia's direction.

"Oooph. Someone's put on a few pounds! Hey, Dee." She gave the little girl a kiss and a hug, then handed her back to her older brother, who had come chasing after her. They were the only remaining children of a small clan of Brachen who had remained in the city after the Scourge came through. Angel had encountered them one night, scrounging for food, and brought them here. Gunn's people made sure they had enough to eat, and Wesley made sure they had the basics of an education. And Cordelia and Angel spoiled them both rotten.

"Deal come dance," Dee insisted, waving her arms in Cordelia's direction. "Max won't dance. Deal dance?"

"Later, sweetheart," Cordelia promised her. "Right now, I've got to check in with the boss."

Dee pouted, but allowed herself to be taken away. The Seer laughed at herself.

"What's so amusing?" Gunn had abandoned his post, and now stood next to her. "Just thinking," she said.

"Careful, I hear it's a dangerous hobby."

She made a face at him, then became serious. "Life takes you on some weird turns, doesn't it?"

Gunn followed her gaze out into the crowd: humans and Brachen, a family grouping of Tronen demons who almost but not quite passed for Human, and two vampires. Dancing, eating hamburgers and hot dogs, talking, making jokes and laughing and playing tag...

" It's a good thing," he said finally.

"Yeah." She nodded. "It's a very good thing."

#
Angel left the group he had been conversing with, searching the crowd for late arrivals. He finally found Wesley, who had been pulled into service as a grill cook. Covered in a stained apron, his hair mussed and a smudge of soot on one check, the Englishman looked... contented. And when he received a compliment on his food, the man practically glowed. A far cry from the too-nervous, too-apprehensive ex-Watcher of almost nine months before. In the time it took to bring new life to term, a new man had been born as well.

Moving on, Angel's glance caught Gunn, talking intently to some of his people - it must be shift change. Angel squashed the impulse to go check on the sentries. This was Gunn's area. He wasn't going to interfere. Besides, the way his body still ached, he was going to do more good standing around as a symbol than mixing it up with gatecrashers.

A few more steps around the perimeter, and he found Stephen sitting off to the side, talking to an older woman. Good. So long as he still felt the need to interact, still felt a connection to his flock, the priest would stay with them.

But there was still one person missing. Standing in the shadows, Angel searched the crowd, looking with his eyes but listening with his heart, as well. There she was, swinging Adelee up in a very bad attempt at a salsa. The five year old was laughing with pure joy that was reflected in the Seer's face, the two of them having the time of their lives.

Wesley's words about Cordelia's visions came back to him, hovering like a heavy cloud over his enjoyment of the scene. "If her ability continues to grow, she may not be able to resist it...and any balance she has been able to maintain between herself and the needs of others may be completely destroyed."

"Dẹnaich dhi tàmh" he prayed, not even aware he was doing so. "Let her know happiness to balance the sorrow, pleasure to fade the pain." It was selfish, he knew, but the thought that Cordelia might lose that laughter was a pain he couldn't accept. So much of his life had been sacrificed to the battle - but not that. Please god, not that...

#


elsewhere...
Time. A ringing like a chime of infinite tones. Time to end.
Time to begin.
Will it hurt?
Only as much as breathing.
As loving.
As living.


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