Chapter 5

Disclaimer: see Chapter 1

Author’s Note: I re-uploaded a couple of the chapters to fix some errors and some other problems I noticed when I was re-editing this story.

--

Part 5

It was nearly dark by the time she got back to the hotel room she had rented. Dusk was falling yet the world seemed full of light still. She was unconscious of the smile that was spread across her face, oblivious to its presence until Dawn came knocking on the hotel door not five minutes after Buffy had let herself in.

“How did it go?” Dawn asked the moment the imitation-oak door opened, pushing passed her sister to enter the hotel’s inner sanctuary. Dawn noticed the dreamy, happy look that decorated her sister’s normally pensive face. Dawn smiled happily at her sister, taking this as a good sign. Looking at her sister closely, she had another question, “Did you just get back?”

“Yeah,” Buffy replied, coming down from her high and regaining that pensive look that Dawn had found present on her sister’s face ever since Buffy had arrived in L.A. nearly three days ago.

She seemed distracted, Dawn noted and when the pensive frown reappeared on her sister’s face, Dawn’s own happy smile faded as well.

“And?” Dawn queried, hoping to get some answers out of her sister and possibly even that dreamy smile again. She moved until she was sitting on the edge of Buffy’s hotel bed, tracing invisible patterns on the flowered bedcover.

“And, I don’t know,” Buffy replied honestly. She didn’t know. She wasn’t being evasive but, since arriving at the hotel, she had been re-evaluating the afternoon spent with Angel. She wasn’t quite sure if it had been all that she thought it had been. Uncertainty was beginning to cloud her memory.

“Well, what happened?” Dawn asked impatiently, abandoned her bed doodling and moving to twirl long locks of hair around her finger. It was a nervous, impatient habit developed as a child and one that she had never quite be able to let go of.

“We talked, that’s all,” she said but she was distracted by thoughts of that afternoon as it replayed through her head.

“What about,” Dawn prodded, hoping to spark some of that Buffy-esque conversational ability out of her sister. “What did you find out?”

She thought about it for a moment before starting. “Liam Angelus O’Roarke, known as Angel to his friends and associates. Born on April the 12th in 1978. Orphaned at age three; no relatives but a large trust fund inaccessible until his 21st birthday. He went into foster care but the state got none of the trust fund; a lawyer had control of the funds distribution,” she recited almost as if she was reading a book. “Guess which law firm?” she asked, impishish Buffy delight now evident in her tone.

Dawn pretended to think for a moment, resting her chin in her palm. “Um, Wolfram and Hart?” she asked after a moment.

“Ding, ding, ding. Give the girl a prize,” Buffy replied sarcastically.

“So, Wolfram and Hart took away his memory?” Dawn asked, trying to piece together the scant information she had been given. It made sense in the kind of sense that it didn’t. But since when did making sense matter in their lives?

“I don’t know,” her sister answered truthfully. “Honestly, I don’t think they would have the power to do this,” she added. “It speaks more of divine intervention, if you catch my meaning.”

Dawn nodded, indeed catching her older sister’s meaning. Buffy thought that the Powers That Be had something to do with this whole memory loss thing. But where did Wolfram and Hart fit into all of this, Dawn wondered.

“Now can I continue, Miss Interruptus?” Buffy asked. Seeing Dawn’s nod, she went on. “Now, Angel was raised in the public school system of Sunnydale, California. Which, since it’s not a giant crater, has no records of this not being true so it’s a win-win, lose-lose sort of situation. Angel then attended UC Sunnydale, majoring in criminology.

“He then went on to join the police training academy two years after graduating from UCLA, where he had transferred after three years at UC Sunnydale. He finished the training but before he could hired at any police department, something happened. Some sort of trauma, according to his doctors, but I’m not so sure.

“Anyways, an anonymous 911 phone call lead an ambulance to his unconscious body. He was taken to the hospital where, apparently, the doctors were completely baffled because he showed no signs of any sort of trauma yet he was in a coma. Angel said the doctors didn’t believe he would ever wake up yet one morning he did.

“He has no memories of the personal sort before waking up in the hospital. All the facts and training he learned at school and at the police academy are, amazingly, still there. But he says it’s like having knowledge but without any context to how you gained that knowledge,” she paused, catching her breath after the long minutes that had been occupied solely be her re-telling Angel’s story.

Dawn stared wide-eyed at her sister sitting across from her in some uncomfortable hotel chair. “That’s…” she began sputtering before realizing that she wasn’t quite such what to make of the bizarre tale.

Buffy gave her a small smile. “Exactly,” she said with a light chuckle. “And I’m not done,” she added with another small smile, this one verging on more of a grin than an actual full-fledged smile. She twisted and fiddled with her hands as she sought for the words, and the strength, to continue this barebones recitation without emotion.

“Angel’s released from the hospital and goes back to his apartment, which he conveniently owns and it’s completely furnished,” she continued but before she could go further her sister just have to butt in.

“With Angel’s own stuff?” Dawn asked before screwing up her face in befuddlement as she realized that her question didn’t quite make a lot of sense, considering the confused look being reflected on her sister’s face. “I mean, is it furnished with vampire Angel’s stuff?”

Buffy shot Dawn an amused but somewhat confused look. “I don’t know, actually,” she replied, “it’s not like I saw the place or anyway.” She paused, thinking about the man she had met today who was like her Angel is some many ways yet different, unique. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. “Maybe,” she added.

Dawn just nodded but kept her mouth shut. She scouted further back on the queen-sized bed and leaned back against the headboard. Buffy watched her movements but remained where she was, sitting on that uncomfortable-looking chair slightly hutched over, arms tense on her knees, hands clasping and unclasping. Dawn nodded again to indicate to her sister that she was ready for Buffy to continue with her story.

“He then applied to the LAPD, got hired somewhere, and has spent the last two or so years totally devoted to his job. From what I gathered he’s a loner.” She summed up what she knew, retelling the last part of Angel’s strange tale. “I guess sometimes don’t change,” she added with a wry grin, thinking back to all times she had found Angel alone and surrounded only by a fire and some ancient novel. She briefly wondered what he had been like in L.A., suddenly sad that she never got to know the man that he became, the man he matured into. Just another lost moment, she figured. She had plenty of them.

“That sounds so.” Dawn paused, searching for the right word but her mind was blank, despite her wide-range of vocab usually.

Buffy nodded at her sister. “Lonely?” she suggested. Lonely was a term that she found applicable. The whole afternoon she had felt the incredible loneliness that surrounded Angel, engulfing him almost she thought. His existence seemed so lonely, so without the comforts she had always found necessary. Not physical comforts like food or a warm bed but the emotional comforts of friends, of loved ones. He was truly alone.

“Yeah.” Dawn’s voice was soft and contemplative as she considered all that her sister had told her. Angel’s life did seem very lonely. It seemed full of facts but no emotions, like a house with no one living in it seems cold, yet fill it with people who care about each other and it becomes a warm, living home. “Very Spartan,” Dawn commented of his lifestyle.

“I suppose so.” Buffy nodded at her sister. “I know that being human must have been something Angel wanted but I don’t know if this was what he wanted,” she added with infinite sadness in her voice, her eyes grey with sadness.

“What do you mean?” Dawn asked, slightly confused. She watched her sister stand gracefully, her movements panther-like in their gracefulness and sleekness. She watched as her sister gently sat at the edge of the bed in a cross-legged position and faced her. Grey-green eyes meant light crystal blue ones and Dawn felt that her sister was trying to help her understand the deeper sadness surrounding Angel’s situation.

“Being human, for Angel, meant being able to live with the friends that formed his family here in L.A., I believe. Without them here to share with the victory, I think he would find being human hollow, without meaning,” she tried to explain, trying vainly to express her emotions and feelings into words but failing somehow to convey just exactly what she felt. It was like the words would never be enough, could never convey the emotions she was feeling. Even to her, it felt like Angel’s victory over the demon inside in was hollow, false, cheap. He could to be human but what was the cost? His friends, his memory? Everything that had made him human while he was a demon was gone, leaving him with the reality of being human but without any purpose. Buffy thought it was an incredibly sad way to live a life.

Dawn nodded, comprehension dawning on her as she took in all that Angel had lost and what little he had seemed to gain through all his sacrifices. It was a hollow victory, Dawn realized, full of balloons and confetti but without meaning. “How do we make it right?” she asked. A child’s question Dawn realized afterwards, sounding petulant and unhappy without everything being granted to them. She hated the words now, the voice she had used, so soft and childish, but she wanted to know what to do to make it right. She wanted to give Angel back his memory, who he was.

“I don’t think we can Dawn,” Buffy replied gently, a light mothering tone enthused in her voice. It wasn’t up to them, she knew. Willow perhaps could do something but she, Buffy, couldn’t do anything but get to know this new Angel.

They sat in silence, taking it all in, all the implications and all the consequences of Angel.

--