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War Stories: Raising the Banner (1/1)
Series: War Stories
A/N: You don't need to know these things to read, but you might want to.
Concept: This series is a universe to which I will add separate stories. The stories have beginnings and ends, some more plotastic than others, but there’s no overall plot, just overall concept. There is no “end”.
Style: This is crack. If you’re looking for stunning prose, go elsewhere. Each story within the series will be finished when I post it, but as for the series overall, I post as I go, without a beta. Suggestions and corrections are always welcome, however.
Setting: The only AU element is that the episode “Origin” never happened. No one but Angel knows who Connor really is. NFA happens, minus the Connor bits. The fic is set post-NFA in a post-apocalyptic world.
Characters: Focus is on Connor and Angel, with a good side of Spike. There will be other Buffyverse characters, some major and some minor, and lots of OCs. There will be ‘ships that happen between all of these, including slash, but for the most part, this series is gen. It’s about fictional war and politics, derring-do and swashbucklingness, burdens of leadership, orders of command, warring factions, insubordination, that kind of thing, with a father and son at the heart of it.
Disclaimers: I got this idea while watching A&E’s Horatio Hornblower, one of the few things that wasn’t a romance that has enthralled me to the point of being fannish. The overall theme, and many of the concepts of intrigue and adventure, are inspired by that production.
Further Disclaimer: Keep in mind: this is crack. Not so much in concept but execution. I’m playing fast and loose with characterizations and stuff like…setting (it’s a made up setting, not researched at all, and it's set there just because I thought it would be crazy). And I have no idea who else would want to read something like this besides me, but I'm having so much fun with it I decided to keep it as fun for me as possible. So I'm winging it. I've never done that before, so bear with me. Or you know, laugh at me; I don't care.
Title: Raising the Banner (1/1)
Length: 8,500 words
Rating: PG
Summary: “Origin” never happened; post-NFA, post-apocalyptic world. Focus on Angel, Connor, and Spike. See above note for more information about this universe. It's my new crack.
It was three weeks after life as anyone knew it went kerblooey. Spike was casing a motel. Should’ve been people here, he’d thought, huddled together in some of the rooms, but inside each door he opened, it smelled empty or like rotting bodies. Could take blankets from the empty ones, Spike guessed. And towels, and lots of the bathrooms still had little soap bars wrapped in paper. Spike thought about leaving the soap behind just to piss off Angel, but in the end Spike didn’t spite his face. Cutting off his nose wouldn’t get rid of this smell all over him.
Because they were out of towners, Spike guessed, that’s how come the motel was so bad. Spike had seen worse buildings in the past three weeks, but usually there were pockets of survivors here and there. The smell of fear, to overpower the smell of death. But tourists didn’t have their secret spots, their bomb shelters or their escape routes from the city. Didn’t have friends to band together with. Didn’t even have kitchen utensils to use as weapons. Just these . . . these damn bars of soap, and they just . . . all died, and Spike wished his stomach could heave over and out.
Instead, his temple really stung, and silver flashed in front of his eyes.
Speaking of kitchen utensils—
A knife. Oh, right, that would be blood there, on the side of his face.
“No, Cassidy!”
Gameface that was, and it was easy to tell where the knife had been lobbed from, and not just because of the foolish give-away yell.
Spike dropped the soap, jumped down from the second story rail, and sprinted through the parking lot. A man and a girl popped out of hiding from behind a dumpster and started running away. Man was just a boy, Spike realized—tall, but lanky still and kind of gawky. Good runner, though, freakishly faster than the girl, who couldn’t’ve been more than fourteen. Cassidy, wasn’t it, Spike guessed, the one who threw the knife. Good aim, that, and Spike hadn’t even heard them or smelled them before the act. Good, yeah—runners, shots, sense. Could use them, Spike knew.
In less than a minute, the vampire’s hand descended on the girl’s shoulder, and with the way the girl lashed back and fought, Spike wasn’t so sure any more. Good at the fight stuff, yeah, but perhaps not enough with the sense after all. Left to themselves, people went back to the wild, couldn’t play nice with others, couldn’t take orders. Maybe Cassidy was already too far gone to recruit. Spike had to tackle her down just to make her afraid.
But less than a minute after that, Spike was on the ground himself, five feet away, with a good one smacked right on the side of his head. The man-boy had come back for his girl and hit Spike—hard. Carried him through the bloody air. Blinking, Spike shook his head. The boy and girl had started running again. Rolling his eyes—which on second thought, made him dizzy—Spike got up in pursuit.
There was no question of not bringing them back with him, now. There was something wrong with that boy, and that meant the boy was either with them, or dead. No way you left a kid that could slam a vampire around like that on the loose. For one thing, it’d make Angel worried, and when he got worried, he got that little pissy face like he was passing stones all the time. For another thing, Spike was curious. And he was always up for a tussle.
This time, Spike grabbed the boy. The kid had slowed down to pace with his girl, so Spike didn’t have as much trouble as he would have catching up. Didn’t hold on for too long. Just jerked him around, and punched him in the face. “Not gonna hurt you,” he said, because he actually meant it, except for the part where he’d just punched the kid in the face, and the part where he really wanted a fight.
The boy lobbed a punch back—and missed. Kid was strong, but still had no idea what he was doing, Spike concluded. Disappointed, he caught the next punch the boy threw at him with his hand, closing fingers around that strangely big square of flesh. “Said, not gonna hurt you, but I will if I have to. Try it one more time.”
“Okay,” the boy said, and tried to knee his crotch.
“Jesus!” Spike yelped, because he almost had to let go of the kid to avoid it, and because the girl was banging on his back with both fists. She, it was obvious, didn’t have the same strength her man did. “Get her off it,” Spike growled, in face again, “or I’ll snap her in two.”
The boy looked at him for a minute. “Cassidy,” he said.
“What!” she demanded. “I’m getting him good!”
“Cassidy, cut it out.”
“Why do you—always—boss—me—around!” She was punctuating each word with a fist to Spike’s back. Spike rolled his eyes again. Glancing quickly at the boy, he loosened his grip on him to bring his other arm around to grab the girl and bring her around front. Then he let them both go.
They stared at him dumbly. Spike shrugged. “He’s just taking care of you, mite. He your big brother?”
Cassidy glanced nervously up at the boy. “Yeah. Yeah, and he can so kick your ass.”
Spike smirked, eyeing the boy. “That so, junior?”
The boy crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “What do you want?”
Spike’s eyes, still assessing the boy, went into slits. The kid had big hands, feet, but slim hips, narrow chest. Sky blue eyes and long hair that was stringy with sweat and hung in his eyes. Pale skin, baby face. Spike licked his lips. “Want?” he repeated, whole aura laconic.
“You’re not human,” the boy said, uncomfortable.
Spike smirked again. “Nope.”
The kid was still scowling from before. “Very fine weather we’re having.”
The sarcastic comment jolted Spike out of it. Sure, it was fun to make the kids afraid, but not if it would cost him their allegiance. “There more of you?”
“There’s—”
“There’s just us,” the boy said quickly, cutting off his sister.
“And you are?”
“Connor.”
The girl looked up at her brother, hesitant. Then, “Cassidy,” her voice a challenge directed at Spike.
The vampire nodded. “Matching. How precious. Well kids, what I want is to know whether you want to join the Resistance. Wait, let me rephrase that. I want you to join the Resistance and you’re going to want what I want real soon now.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Cassidy voted.
“Resistance?” Connor asked.
“Yeah. You know, the good guys. Fight the bad guys. Save puppies. Well, these days, eat puppies, but at least there’s none of that nailing stuff Angelus used to like to do, and you will get fed.”
Cassidy swallowed hard. “Fed?”
“Angelus?” Connor repeated.
Spike ignored that. “Got a bunch of people holed up in a safe place. You can come join us, get protected, supplies, in return help us out and we call it even.”
“It’s a trick,” Cassidy said.
“Help you out?” Connor repeated.
Spike shrugged. “Bollocks if I know. Haven’t got that part worked out yet. You can fight though, that’s good. Guess we might needs some . . . cooks, cleaners, that sort of tripe.”
“Show me,” Connor said.
Spike shook his head. “Good piece from here. We have to drive.” Spike watched Connor hesitate. “It’s more than just you two, innit?” After a moment, Connor nodded. “Who?” Spike persisted.
Connor cut Cassidy off before she could say anything again. “Families. Three of them.”
Spike raised a brow. “Yours?”
Another nod. “Parents.”
“And they’re . . . what, while you two kids are out . . .”
“Scouting,” Cassidy replied promptly.
Connor slit a glance at Cassidy. “We snuck out.”
Read: she snuck out, and he snuck out after her. That was nice. Spike liked that. “How many, again?”
“Eleven of us altogether.”
Spike nodded. “There are three hundred of us.”
Connor blinked. “With food.”
“Yeah, shelter, the whole three hundred yards, or whatever. You up for it, tyke?”
Connor thought about it. Cassidy looked at Connor, trusting him. Spike liked that, too. “Okay. Yeah. Just one thing. Don’t ever call me tyke.”
“Sure thing, kid. Now take me to your leader.”
The kids started off, and Spike followed a distance behind. Didn’t want to intimidate them. Besides, even though they were whispering, he could still hear every word.
“Are you sure?” Cassidy was asking.
Connor grabbed her hand. “I’ll protect you, Cass. Don’t you worry.”
Spike liked that most of all.
Angel didn’t like this at all.
He was sweaty and dirty and covered with goo, and the parcels he was carrying were unwieldy. When you thought about the world ending, which Angel admittedly had once or twice, you didn’t think about the tiny details, such as bags. Shopping bags, trashbags, canvas bags, who cared, something to carry the food they were looting from the drugstores and Wal-marts. He’d gone out to fight the demons they’d gotten wind were camped in the grocery store two blocks away, he hadn’t expected to come back with—
“Tea?” Harmony had her hands on her hips. “You were at Ralph’s for that long and you brought us tea?”
“It was there.” Angel shoved the boxes into the blond’s arms.
“I could use blood, Mister It’s Wrong To Eat Humans.” She thought a moment. “You didn’t even look for the shampoo, did you.”
“Wasn’t a shopping expedition. It’d already been looted; this was all they had.”
“Why are you always so huffy? Couldn’t you at least get—”
“Harm. Shut up.” Angel pushed past her.
Harmony had showed up at the Hyperion two days after the alley. Ripped up, scared, angry at Angel for sending her away when the world was ending anyway, she fit right in. Her year at Wolfram and Hart had . . . well, not payed off, considering that gross salary she’d made and the fact that she still didn’t know how to handle a fax machine, but she could do menial. He could give her the tea and make her deal with it. She kept up their stocks, even if she couldn’t be relied upon to remember what was in them, and she could find supplies when needed.
She was good enough, Angel told himself, and tried not to think more about it. Hell if he knew what to do with three hundred plus starving, helpless, homeless people, and the crux of it was: that wasn’t his responsibility, no matter what Spike said. Angel didn’t organize. He didn’t structure. He helped, he fought, he protected. And he would protect them, if only they would shut up, leave him alone, and not ask him questions like—
“Hey—hey, uh Angel, sir? They sent me to—uh . . . I don’t know what to . . . but it’s women’s room. Angel. Sir. I mean, off the food court. It’s flooded, see, and we were wondering if you could, uh—”
“I’m not a plumber,” Angel growled, and stalked away.
“Hey, but uh, you’re Angel, aren’t—”
Angel kept on walking. “I said leave me alone.”
After twenty steps someone else intercepted his path. A woman, in her fifties. Gemina, Angel remembered. One of the first survivors they’d found, brought to the Hyperion. Smart lady, wiry, resourceful. Kept coming up with things no one else could find. Like every single other survivor, Angel didn’t trust her as far as he could throw the Hyperion itself. “Hey Angel, was that Mack?” she asked. “Did he tell you about—”
“Don’t want to hear.”
“What about—”
“No.”
“Angel.” She stepped in front of him, bird-like body squaring its eensy shoulders. “They just can’t sleep like this any more. They need mattresses. They’re old. One woman, over eighty. Suffers from arthritis. If we just—”
“If you just,” Angel corrected. “Let me pass.”
The straight, regular features in her face crumpled. “But Angel, I thought you—”
“Gemina.” He settled big hands on her shoulders. There was a small perk of light in her eyes, that he remembered her name. “How many times does it take to tell you I don’t care? Find someone else. Right now I’m dirty, and I’m tired.”
“But, sir, I mean, Angel. It’s just—”
His thumbs pressed into her shoulders. “I’m also very, very hungry.”
Her eyes widened, and she began to tremble. He let her go, and she let him pass without a word.
Several minutes later, Angel slammed into the office at the back of the Barnes and Noble. “Tell me something good, Gunn.”
“Somewhere in your wicked, miserable past, there must’ve been a moment of truth?”
Angel stared at him. “Why did you let them do that Gilbert and Sullivan stuff?”
“That was Rogers and Hammerstein. And trust me, I don’t know. Got the insulin problem under control.”
Angel scrubbed his face. “What insulin problem?”
Gunn gave him a funny look. “The insulin problem. Diabetic dude, remember? Alfred Carson? Is this not ringing any bells?”
Frowning, Angel said, “Okay. So that’s fixed. Anything else?”
Gunn flipped through some papers. He was what, if Angel had been at Wolfram and Hart, might’ve been termed human resources. He fielded complaints, settled disputes, made people feel welcome and remembered names. Pretty good at it too, what with the powers of debate and smooth talking drilled into his skull. But he still couldn’t get up much, move about, due to the same wounds that prevented him from scouting or foraging like Angel, Spike, Illyria, and the healthier humans. Instead of Gunn going to the people, the people had to come to Gunn. And they did. But not enough. Angel disliked that, too.
“The women’s room off the food court—”
“Something good, I said.”
“Right. The Fist still wants to—”
“Fuck the Fist,” Angel said succinctly.
Gunn shook his head at the words. “Not touching that one. Too easy.” He rifled some more papers. “Spike’s back. Brought a pack with him. ‘Round a dozen.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you gonna go meet ‘em?”
Angel stiffened. “Why should I?”
Gunn just shrugged. “Hey, whatever man.”
“We have room?”
“Scads. They can take . . . that’s cool, Forever 21. Want to show them—”
“You show them.”
“Yeah, ‘cause they love a little intestine on their shirts now and then. See I would, but I got these stitches—”
“Okay. Fine. I’ll show them.”
And they would follow. And that’s what Angel disliked most.
They’d followed him into that alley. And after a night of fighting, they’d followed him into the Hyperion. The hotel had always been the fallback plan. If the battle lasted beyond the night, if they had to regroup, if they had to nurse survivors, they had the Hyperion. But as that night melted into days and days, the first regroup into an all-out war, the few survivors into hordes that needed more than just the nurse back to health, Angel knew it wasn’t going to work.
The Hyperion was flimsy, for one thing. Unstable with all those stories, lots of people easily downed with one razing. Another was supplies. There were beds and bathrooms enough, but they needed clothes, food, tools, and with Angel and team’s desertion, all that had been left there were the standard hotel amenities and a few random possessions Angel had stocked there. You could only burn so many Gideon Bibles for warmth. Then there was the fact that while the individual rooms provided the privacy he’d initially thought ideal for taking in the bystander or few that’d been hurt by the apocalypse, individual rooms were utterly inconvenient for hordes. Too much fear of what was going on behind those closed doors, too much running from room to room to assess problems, emergencies, too much space squabbling. Not enough room.
The worst of it wasn’t the fact of the shrinking physical space, but why it was shrinking: because people just kept coming. And staying. Those first few nights, all he and Spike had done was pull bodies from the wreckage while Illyria covered them. They’d brought in nearly fifty like that, the wounded and dying. Those people stayed and lived, or stayed and died. Then, in later days, the vampires began to take in the groups: children hiding in cellars, gangs wandering the streets, families running but not knowing what they were running from. The numbers swelled.
During the day, they left the front door open, and strangest of all was the way people just came. Of course, just as many were looking for someone to eat or kill as others were looking for someone to protect them. And not all of those kind were demons. Angel had killed more human beings in these past few days than he had put together in the last hundred years, and soon he would be able to start adding his unsouled days to that limit, too, he suspected.
But even the occasionally necessary murder of mortals was not enough to keep the numbers down. Everyday, he and Spike found more—victims trapped in rubble, clutches of old women bunkering down in nursing homes, sometimes whole housefuls fighting armies of demons alone. There were demons too, harmless demons, half demons, demons with souls, multitudes of every race and species helpless and on the run. And still, people just came: on foot, in cars, through the sewers, on bikes even, streaming in, like they knew the Hyperion was home.
Not for long. Five days ago, with nearly three hundred people in tow, Angel had instigated the move. He and Spike and Gunn had discussed their options—well, he and Gunn had discussed, Spike had argued, and Illyria had watched—and eventually settled on the mall, not so many miles away.
Angel would’ve liked somewhere underground. Somewhere less penetrable and out in the open. But there was no such stronghold nearby, and the move became more and more pressing. They needed somewhere relatively stable, and the mall was one of the few large buildings within a ten miles that hadn’t suffered serious damage, Spike reported. This was because there was a loose band squatting inside, run by someone called the Fist, that was unified enough to ward off most attacks, which also meant a lot of the supplies inside were intact. It was also in good shape because it was low to the ground, not vulnerable to the dragons and air attacks. They needed wide open spaces, food courts and department stores which could be emptied out to hold the wounded and the fearful together and unified. The needed somewhere big enough that it would take a more massive force than they had yet seen to surround them completely. And they needed somewhere big enough to hold them.
Angel had known they couldn’t stay at the Hyperion, but he hadn’t meant to be the one to move them. They were random people, from random walks of life, merely knit together by coincidence of location. They owed nothing to each other, or to him, and he had never asked it of them. When he’d decided to move to the mall, he hadn’t issued a command, just that information: he, Spike, Gunn, and Illyria were leaving, and if others wanted, they could come too. He was just a warrior, just a fighter, just one of them except stronger and on a blood diet. Just trying to survive, doing what he could. Protector, he’d said over and over again. Not leader. And yet he led them, and they followed.
They came in several runs of two vans Gemina had found—Angel still didn’t know where—and a few cars people had managed to keep or steal. There was resistance from the squatters, led by the Fist—mallrats, Gunn called the lot of them—but after a short struggle, they’d withdrawn to the west wing, and the Hyperion survivors took the east. After all, the latter had had Spike and Angel on their side, and for the single hour in which the skirmish lasted, there had been a strange unity among those from the Hyperion. They acted, Angel thought later, not like a random group, but like a people, bound by a common purpose. His people, bound by him, because the things he had shouted in that short struggle—shouted in the heat of battle, without knowing what he was doing—people listened to, were aroused by, and obeyed.
Angel had seen in the years at Angel Investigations that when people had larger than life problems, they wanted a larger than life hero. And despite the success of the whole crew, they sought Angel out in particular because he fulfilled their image of that sort of hero, no matter how flawed Angel really was. He had the swirly coat, the sword in hand, and most of all, he wasn’t quite human. But that was supposed to mean that he could fight the bad guys, not that he could cure diabetes with a touch and fix backed up plumbing. And yet, suddenly, he was not only Mr. Fix It, but the arbiter of every problem, the answer to every prayer. They trusted him.
He didn’t trust them. Couldn’t trust them; each one could be a spy of Wolfram and Hart’s or the Senior Partners’. Each one of them could be desperate enough, scared enough, just plain human enough to steal, murder, go berserk in all this madness and destroy everyone else.
Worse yet, in the past two days, the squatters from the west wing had begun to sidle up, interact with the people Angel had brought from the Hyperion. They’d begun to trade, combine efforts, make friends. And, through the grapevine, dump more problems on Angel. The Fist wanted to treaty with him—with Angel, he said, specifically. Angel thought it was swell if the mallrats wanted to join up, or even if they wanted to fight against them again. What he didn’t want was to be treated as the person who made these decisions, who was in charge of these things. Because with the squatters, they would be up to eight hundred, and it would only be a matter of time before they looked to Angel to lead them, too.
This new group Spike had brought in, they would look at him the same way also. Even if he refused to see them now, somehow the new ones always found out. They would be just another dozen, like the last, but it was another dozen who would give him a responsibility he didn’t want. Another dozen looking to him for something he couldn’t give. Another dozen unwilling weights on his shoulders, when all he wanted was some peace.
Gunn was talking about them. “Spike said you should take a look at them. One of them’s got super strength, or something?”
“They’re demons?” Angel asked, clicking out of the morbid thoughts.
“Must be. One of them anyway. Spike said he needed training.”
“If they want training, they can do training. Spike can do training. I’m not doing training.”
Gunn’s mouth tightened in a sardonic smile. “Hey. You do what you want. I don’t have Illyria’s hang up on feudal law. Democracy, that’s my vote. Doesn’t mean someone doesn’t need to organize a system where some people or hundred learn to throw a punch.”
“No organizing. I’m not organizing training, not organizing . . .” Angel made a vague gesture to the outside world. “Wolfram and Hart proved I can’t . . .” Another wave. “I don’t do that. I fight. I protect. I protect, not—”
“Good, because you suck at organizing. Angel, quit with the saying you’re not going to do and don’t do.”
Angel stood up. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, don’t do. That’s what I’m going to do. Not do. I mean—”
“We done here?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Cool. ‘Cause frankly? You smell.”
“What—”
“That was literal. The demon goo. You smell.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. Oh.”
Angel stopped by the security office to change his clothes, then found the men’s restroom and scrubbed himself down. Worst thing about the mall, as opposed to the Hyperion, was the lack of showers. Angel wasn’t sure he could stand it any more.
Maybe, he was thinking, he could leave. Just leave it, leave it all. Fight demons, sure, help people where he could, but never stay. Then they could expect nothing from him. Wouldn’t be right, Angel concluded, as he tried to tease the demon pus out of his hair, but there was something to what Gunn had said. He’d been reluctantly shouldering the burdens they all gave him because he felt he deserved them. The thing of it was, he deserved them because he’d caused all this. Desolation, despair, the helplessness that led to senseless following. They wanted him to lead them, but he didn’t know where to go. He was just as lost as they.
Now he at least knew what to tell them. He wasn’t their savior, their hero, or their leader. He would fight for them, but most likely die for them as well. When they looked at their future, they shouldn’t see him in it. Angel dried his hands, and left the bathroom.
It had only been five days, but even since then, The Gap had been designated the “new room. You know, where the new people go. Which makes sense,” Harmony had added, smacking her forehead. “It's like, a metaphor. The gap. Between the outside, and . . . you know, here.” “The outside” was something Angel had started hearing even back at the Hyperion. As if inside was both a community and a sanctuary.
A lot of the clothes racks and shelves had been picked over, and most had been moved, so the Gap was a large, mostly clear area where people coming in could drop supplies. Or bodies. The wounded came in through the entrance near here. And the dead.
Angel didn’t know who had started it, but when new groups came in, someone usually came to get him. Even Spike always sent someone for him—probably just to mock him, because Spike knew the way that people looked to him frustrated Angel. But Angel had always come, because he’d seen the merit in it, in the big shoulders, the coat, the sword making people feel safe.
Not after today. He wouldn’t come again. It fed to that idea that he was in charge here, when he was the first thing refugees saw when they arrived. These people, today—the people whose fear he could smell, milling around inside the mall entrance, standing below the awning of the Gap—he would tell them he wasn’t in charge. That this safety they felt in his presence—yes, it meant he could fight demons, but he couldn’t fix the air conditioning or settle their disputes with their neighbors’ space. He wouldn’t solve their problems, attend their needs, or lead them. They were on their own.
Angel tilted his head, still smelling the fear . . . and stood stock still.
He took one step, two, and rounded the corner, where the sunlight of the mall entrance spilled onto the group scattered in front of The Gap. Eleven people, whispering quietly, their voices like “shush” sounds in the morning light, ragged, already too thin, old . . . young . . .
Laying eyes on them, Angel’s world shifted. All of it, this world he thought he had ended, jilted a little to the left.
He stood there. After several minutes, a silence fell, and eleven pairs of eyes—brown, green, amber . . . blue, looked back at him. Angel strode forward to them, to the edge of the shadow.
“I’m Angel,” he said, after a moment’s silence.
After a small hesitation, a man from the group stepped forward. Salt and pepper colored hair, mostly salt, large, straight dignified features, blue eyes. “Reilly,” the man said.
Angel closed his eyes at that, briefly. “Yes.” His voice was soft. “And the others?”
“My family,” he gestured back at a women and . . . another two. “These are Elliot's,” gesturing to a woman and a little boy, “And Gutierrez’s.” He gestured at an old gentleman and a middle-aged one, and three children pressed up against their legs.
“And you’re here for?” Angel asked. Still that gentle tone.
Reilly looked confused. “Spike said . . . you know Spike?”
“I know Spike,” Angel said, his eyes holding Reilly’s even.
Reilly drew himself up, scowling a little. “Well, he said we could come here, and that it was food, and shelter, and protected. And that to stay, we had to work, but that it would be worth our while.”
Angel blinked. This was what Spike was telling people?
“Well,” Reilly said again, looking back at the three families, “we’re willing to work, whatever we can do to help. And if this is the place for us—we’ll . . . well, we’ll do it.
Angel noticed the “if”. A caution, as if the man wanted to assess the place before he committed his family to it. Angel turned that over in his head. “You’ll stay,” he said abruptly.
He finally turned away from Reilly. He looked over the rest of them, all except one, eyes scanning each of them, as if in searching them he could find the one he really wanted to see. He shifted his gaze back to Reilly, because seeing him was so much easier. “How are you? All of you? Not hurt? Made it okay? Need medical . . . something?”
Reilly’s eyes passed briefly over the families again. He didn’t leave anyone out. “We’re hungry,” he said, turning back to Angel, “and we think Nadia’s arm is broken.” He gestured at a girl, the one pressed up against her father’s legs. “But other than that, mostly just cuts and bruises.”
“All of you,” Angel insisted. “You’re all okay. Except for the arm,” he amended. “But all of you?” His eyes began to stray . . . to the floor, to the teenage boy’s shoes, up his baggy jeans . . . Angel snapped his eyes up to Reilly.
“Yes. Well, we—they . . . already lost some.”
Angel blinked. “What?”
“Becky’s husband,” Reilly said, gesturing at the family he had named Elliot. “And her daughters. And Guadalupe’s wife.” A gesture at the Gutierrez’s.
Angel looked at the bereaved families. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
There was a silence. “Spike said we get to fight,” someone said suddenly.
Angel looked over. Fourteen year old girl, dark haired, amber eyed. “You’re . . .” he faltered.
“Cassidy,” she repeated, defiant.
“Spike said it was the Resistance.” Resonant, masculine, but still with a touch of youth in his voice. Angel at last looked over to the teenager standing beside Cassidy. His eyes locked eyes with blue ones. If Angel had been alive, his heart would have been beating very, very fast. “Connor,” the boy supplied, without Angel having to ask.
The vampire swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “I . . .” he croaked, and tried again. “Resistance?”
Connor nodded, then impatiently brushed hair out of his face. “Fighting bad guys? And some crap about puppies?”
“Connor,” a woman’s voice said, in half-hearted remonstrance.
Connor gave a rueful half smile in acknowledgment, his eyes not leaving Angel’s.
Angel’s knees felt weak. “You can’t fight,” he said at last. “It wouldn’t be safe. You have to stay safe.” He blinked, and stepped back, looking around again. “All of you. Safe.”
“It’s not the Resistance?” One of the Gutierrez children. Not Nadia, the kid with the broken arm. Too young to be relieved or disappointed. Just curious.
“What is it, exactly?” Reilly wanted to know. “This . . . a commune?”
“This is . . .” Angel looked around him, into The Gap, into the sunlight pouring in the large glass entrance wall, not into the group of people. He was too conscious of his eyes, of what they were looking at every moment, of what they were not looking at. He tried to settle his gaze, focusing on Reilly again. “It’s a sanctuary.”
Someone made a movement. Becky Elliot. “That’s what we were led to believe,” she said.
Guadalupe Gutierrez, Nadia’s father, spoke. Angel had never been good with the names, barely remembered Gemina, whom they’d pulled out of the rubble the very second night. But these names, here, today, every single one of them would be burned into his brain until the day he fell to dust. “Yeah,” Gutierrez was saying, “but what is it? How do you run things?”
“Run things,” Angel repeated. He swung his gaze to Gutierrez. “Through me. It goes . . . through me.” He swallowed, licked his lips. “You need help, you come to me. Every single one of you. You come to me.”
“Okay, but what—”
Angel was still talking. “You have a problem. You need protection. You need food, clothes; you need . . . light fixtures. You come to me. Someone bothering you, I’ll take care of you. Someone after you, I’ll take care of you. Someone . . . steals your socks, I’ll take care of you.”
“All very fine.” A woman, Reilly’s wife, spoke. “But who are you again? And how are you going to do this? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s . . .” She gestured vaguely outside.
“The end of the world?” Angel asked. “No. This place. . .” He looked around again, and at last, his eyes came to rest on Connor again. “I’m starting a new world. Here. As of right now. And it’s going to be a safe world, and good world, and m—our . . . your son—sons and daughters. Your children are going to grow up, and they’re going to—going to live.” He looked, then, at Connor’s mother. “They’re going to live.”
Reilly stepped back a pace, glancing at his wife. “You didn’t answer her question.”
“I’m Angel,” Angel said again. “Just Angel. I’m the leader of the Resistance.”
Connor didn’t like him at all.
Everything this “Angel” had told them so far was a lie.
“This is where you’ll stay,” Angel was saying. Okay, that bit maybe wasn’t a lie. Maybe, if they decided to stay at all.
“Forever 21?” Cassidy asked skeptically.
“All of us?” Becky asked.
Angel looked them over. “There a problem?”
“No,” Reilly said quickly. He turned to Becky. “We stick together.”
Connor smiled at that. Becky had lost everything. Well, they all had, but she’d lost everyone as well, except for Ian. They’d found her on Day Twelve (that’s how Connor counted days after the—well, it. With the dragons, and everything). She’d been stuck sitting there staring like she sometimes did, with Ian naked and clawing at her face. Connor’s parents, without asking who she was or anything else, took her and her son under their wing right then, just like that.
Sometimes she still froze up, or couldn’t stop crying, terrified that she would be left on her own again. But his parents didn’t let her out of their sight. They’d always been good at that, at making sure you weren’t alone. It’d annoyed the hell out of him when Connor was around fourteen, but these days it made him really proud. His dad had promised Becky that first day that they wouldn’t leave her, and they wouldn’t.
Didn’t promise to take care of her, because no matter how strong his parents were, they couldn't stop bad things from happening.
As Angel explained about the store, where to go for Nadia's arm, bathrooms and food, how a guy called the Fist ruled the other half of the mall and it wasn’t safe to go over there, how he was going to get on that, how he was going to make it safer, better, Connor watched. The first thing he’d noticed about Angel was that he was too clean. His clothes weren’t ragged and his leather coat was fancy, and it looked like he’d spent hours on his hair. The way he’d approached them near the mall entrance, looking like a million dollars, then told them they didn’t need to worry any more ‘cause he was here—there was something wrong about that. It was too smooth and suave, too sleek. Designed to seem like an answer to a prayer.
Next thing Connor hadn’t liked was the way Angel acted. He’d made his dad repeat what Spike had told him about this place, then made Connor repeat what Spike had told them about the Resistance. Aggressive, uppity, like he was testing them. Which was okay, Connor got that, but he shouldn’t get to test them without them getting to test back. Instead, Angel acted like he was already in charge of them, broke into that spiel about how much he was going to take care of them now. How much he owned them now.
And what was up with that, anyway? They didn’t need any follow the leader. His family was doing a really good job taking care of itself. Except maybe Cassidy, but she was little still. In fact, Connor thought, looking at Becky, they were doing a really good job of taking care of others as well.
Angel was repeating the spiel now. Connor shoved his hands in his pockets, just watching. The next thing he’d noticed, listening to Angel talk, was he didn’t breathe. It was a thing Connor was finding out, along with the weird badass strength he didn’t know he had until that van hit him; he could sense things. Connor guessed the others hadn’t noticed Angel wasn’t human. Angel had lied about that, too.
He was a vampire, Connor guessed. Connor had noticed the way Angel hadn’t stepped into the sunlight, and there was that lack of breathing thing. Connor was quickly learning about the things that went bump in the night, and Spike had told them straight up that he was a vampire, and could hear their blood pumping, and liked to kill things so watch out.
And Spike had made no pretences about what they’d find at the mall. He’d said there was supplies and protection, none of this personal care-giver crap. He’d also said there was stuff they could do in return, like a fair trade, which made the whole deal sound much more real. The way Angel acted, it was like he was playing king making a fairytale kingdom.
And that was the crux of it. Connor guessed if you were a monster or demon or something, you might not want people to know what you really were, if you wanted them to trust you. And Angel obviously wanted them to trust him. Connor might’ve, if Angel hadn’t been lying about other stuff too. Hey, if Angel could’ve made the peachy keen world he promised, Connor’d forgive him for lying about the fact that he secretly had a bumpy face.
But Angel couldn’t stop bad things from happening any more than his parents could, vampire or no. He couldn’t make a peachy keen world for everyone. And this whole mall thing wasn’t peachy or keen, or even cool. Living in Forever 21? Angel acted like he was doing so much for them, but Connor didn’t see any big defenses around that made this place safer than the motel. He didn’t see a whole lot of supplies, either. Most of the clothes in here had been picked over, the racks all bent and useless. There weren’t even any beds, or any—
“Showers?” Gutierrez was asking. They hadn’t had hot water at the motel for two weeks, but they’d still been able to rinse off. Even then though, they still felt dirty all the time.
“Yeah,” Angel was saying. “We’re working on that. You know, we were at this hotel, originally. It didn’t work out, but the hot water . . . that was nice.”
Cassidy crossed her arms over her chest. “We were at a motel. How’s this better?”
Connor could tell his mom wanted to tell her to be quiet. Connor wanted to tell her too, but they didn’t, because they all had the same question. Connor had just wanted to wait until Angel was out of the way to ask it.
“We’re . . . working on it. The mall is a temporary holding place until we can get somewhere . . . better. But we’re going to get mattresses, and stuff. I’ll show you what we have now. Get that arm fixed up," he added, nodding at Nadia. "And you can meet some people you can come to when I’m not here. Come on.”
They filed out of the store so they could follow the leader again through the mall. As Cassidy passed by him, Angel smiled. “Hey. Cassidy, right? Things are going to be okay. I promise.”
Cassidy lifted her nose. “We’ll see.”
Angel glanced uncertainly at Connor as Cassidy marched on by. Connor didn’t look at him. He really, really didn’t like him.
“Spike,” Angel said. “I was looking for you.”
Spike scowled, swinging the door shut behind him. “Were not.”
“I meant, I was going to look for you. I was about to.” At Spike’s raised brow, Angel rolled his eyes. “I mean, I wanted to see you.”
“Look all you like. Me, I’d be happy to never lay eyes on your mug again.”
“Then what are you doing in here?”
Spike drummed his fingers behind him on the door. “Was hoping you’d be out. Was going to short sheet your bed.”
“I don’t have sheets.”
“Pity.”
“Spike, I don’t have a bed.”
Spike did that thing with his tongue. Angel hated that thing with his tongue. “Pity,” Spike said again, but this time he meant it. He rocked his hips back into the door. “Always walls, you know.”
“God, you’re . . .”
“I’m? Right now, I’m on tenterhooks, mutton head.”
Angel scowled. “’Mutton head’? Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Trying it on for size.”
“Spike, have you been telling people we’re . . . ‘the Resistance’?”
“Might’ve done.” Spike finally moved off the door, leaning across where Angel was sitting to rifle through Angel’s things. There wasn’t much. Some clothes Angel had had at the Hyperion, some weapons. They were in two neat piles on the desk, in the security office of the mall where Angel had chosen to live. Angel rolled his chair back so Spike wouldn’t brush against him, annoyed, but not enough to fight about it.
“Hello, what have we here?” Spike said, walking around the desk to pick up the slime-covered pants Angel had shucked out of earlier that day and left on the floor, not wanting to touch them more than he had to. Spike didn’t have a problem with that. He was feeling them up all over.
“Those are mine,” Angel said, but made no effort to take back the pack of cigarettes Spike had found in the pocket. “Why are you doing that?”
“Something to do with my hands, feels good, more badass than you, doesn’t hurt my lungs, girls love it. Pick one.” Spike pulled out a stick, then his lighter, which he still carried even though it had been a week since he had last been able to get his hands on something to smoke.
“I meant, why are you telling people we’re the Resistance?”
“Got to have a name, don’t we?”
“Why?”
Spike slid down the wall to squat on the floor, neglecting the chair two feet away. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. “You don’t get it, do you,” he told the cigarette. “They want to feel like they’re a part of something. A name, it unites. Lights a fire.” He tapped ash out over his knee onto the floor. He put the cigarette back into his mouth and looked at Angel. “Give them that, and they follow you.”
“Okay.”
Spike’s mouth fell open, and his hand had to come up quick to catch the cigarette. “Huh? Ouch. Fuck. What?” He put his burnt finger into his mouth for a second, looked at Angel, who was smirking, scowled, and removed it, shoving the cigarette back in instead.
“I said okay.”
“Okay to what?” Spike asked suspiciously.
“Where’d you come up with ‘Resistance,’ though? It’s cheesy.”
“You’re one to talk.” Spike breathed out a swirl of smoke. “’S what we do, innit? Resist.”
“And you’ve been telling people to come here and—what, work for us?”
“Got to do something, don’t they? Can’t just pile ‘em up in here and leave them to themselves. Most got it into their heads they’re gonna have to lift a finger if they’re gonna survive, but it begs some kind of system. Give and take, yeah? And ways to regulate. Who does what, who’s gone here for food, there for supplies, all that bloody mess.”
“Okay.”
Spike stood up, frown deep in his face. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’re you trying to get out of me?”
“Huh?”
“This some kind of play?”
“What?” Angel said. “No. I agree with you. We need a system. It needs a name. Those things make sense.”
“But I’ve been saying for weeks—”
“You were right. I was wrong.” Off the look on Spike’s face, Angel almost laughed. “Don’t get worked up about it. I won’t say that again. Ever. I can guarantee, if you want.”
“Worked up?” Spike threw himself into the chair across the desk from where Angel was sitting. “You’re such a fucking ponce,” he said finally.
“One thing about the name,” Angel said. “When you tell people, make sure you tell them it’s not just about resisting. I mean, it is, in the state of the world sense, but it’s about protection too.”
“Oh, right. You want me to pick up your Terminator gig. Ta, but no.”
“Huh? Terminator?”
Spike’s voice took on a stilted, deep accent. “Come with me if you want to live.”
“I don’t say that.”
“Yes you do.”
“I say, come with me and I’ll protect you.”
Spike smirked, apparently not even feeling the need to point out that change in phrase changed very little in meaning. “See the new ones I brought?” he asked instead.
Angel tried not to fidget. “Yes. I put them in Forever 21. Showed them the ropes.”
“But did you see the boy?”
Angel moved the stake on his desk an inch to the left. “What boy?”
“Shit. Didn’t Gunn—”
“That boy.” Angel nodded quickly. “Sure. Gunn told me. They—the family, I mean, didn’t mention it to me personally. The superpower thing.”
“Yeah. Could toss you around like . . .” Spike cast about. “Like cotton panties,” he finished, toeing Angel’s pants on the floor. “He’ll be good for patrols and that.”
Angel stood up, turning his back so Spike couldn’t see his face. “No. No, not—he’s young. He’s too young to go . . .” Angel made a vague gesture. “Out there.”
Angel could hear Spike shrug behind him. “So, send him with Blue. It’s not like—”
“No.”
“You think he’s pretty.”
“No!”
“Come on. You think he’s a doll, don’t you, and you just want to—”
Angel just wanted to rip out Spike’s throat, but then Spike would know. Not the truth, but that Angel cared, and even that was too much. No one could know. No one could even guess, or else Connor would be in danger again. And it was completely secondary in Angel’s mind, but Connor in danger put everyone else in danger too. These demons on the loose, so many out in the open now and free to wander at will—they would come for him, more than had ever surrounded the Hyperion when Connor was just a baby. And Connor . . . least of all could Connor ever know. It would ruin everything Angel had tried to do.
And even though Angel ruined everything else, he hadn’t ruined that. The day he had taken over Wolfram and Hart, Angel had had a perfect world built for Connor, so Connor could be happy. Now Angel just needed to build a world for everyone else, even if he had to lay every single stone of it. So Connor could be happy.
Angel forced himself to empty his face, turn around, give a little shrug. “I like his sister. Seems like she’s got guts.”
“She’s not superwoman,” Spike pointed out. “And she hasn’t got blonde hair.”
Angel let the upset show on his face. As much as he hated fighting with Spike about Buffy, it was at least allowed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” Spike said, shrugging. “’Cept something about her . . . She’ll grow up and look like Darla. Even without the hair.”
Angel contained a shudder. “They don’t look like Darla.”
“They? Sure, the boy does too. Girly, like that.”
Angel forced himself to shrug again. “The other thing, about when you bring people in . . . to the Resistance,” Angel said, tasting the name again. Spike looked like he was going to buck at the subject change, but instead he just raised a brow. “You tell them I’m the leader.”
“I’ll tell them you’re a poof, and like to look over the boys I bring in for a wank or two.” Which, in Spike to English, meant “okay”. Spike leaned in to smush out his cigarette on Angel’s desk, watching Angel carefully. “’Bout bloody time you stepped up,” he said, leaning back. “Going to meet with the Fistjob now?”
“Yeah. Hopefully he wants to join up.” Spike nodded. Angel frowned, watching the other vampire. “I don’t understand you,” he said finally. “Every waking minute you spend defying me. Even when . . .”
“Even when you still liked it when I called you Daddy?”
“Even when you wanted to,” Angel snapped, guilt and the image of Connor’s face sharpening his voice. “But you’re alright with me being in charge of everyone else. You ask for it.”
“Didn’t ask. Told. I’m the power behind the throne, see?”
“No.”
Spike waved a hand randomly. “They come to you. Who knows why. No, I know why. It’s the big hero type. I’m not that.”
“You wanted to be.”
“What, with the cup? No. Point there is it’d be a bit of alright to live. Aside from that, I want to live. Want to Dudley Do-Right, yeah—fight the fight, save the puppies—”
“You’re always stuck on the puppies,” Angel muttered.
“Save the world, if it gets in my way. What I don’t want is to get bogged down under everyone else. That’s you. I get to be in everything, with everyone. You never wanted that anyway. You need me to do it for you. It’s a checks and balance thing, yeah? You get stuck being king. I get to be free. The one with the real power. Too bad for you. It’s the rugby shoulders.”
“I’m not king.”
“Whatever you are, I don’t want to be it.”
“I knew that already.”
“Then Angel.” Spike’s voice was so low that Angel felt as though they were sitting much closer. Spike’s eyes were very blue. “Why do you even need to ask?” He sat back. “Bloody wanker.”
The End
A/N: You don't need to know these things to read, but you might want to.
Concept: This series is a universe to which I will add separate stories. The stories have beginnings and ends, some more plotastic than others, but there’s no overall plot, just overall concept. There is no “end”.
Style: This is crack. If you’re looking for stunning prose, go elsewhere. Each story within the series will be finished when I post it, but as for the series overall, I post as I go, without a beta. Suggestions and corrections are always welcome, however.
Setting: The only AU element is that the episode “Origin” never happened. No one but Angel knows who Connor really is. NFA happens, minus the Connor bits. The fic is set post-NFA in a post-apocalyptic world.
Characters: Focus is on Connor and Angel, with a good side of Spike. There will be other Buffyverse characters, some major and some minor, and lots of OCs. There will be ‘ships that happen between all of these, including slash, but for the most part, this series is gen. It’s about fictional war and politics, derring-do and swashbucklingness, burdens of leadership, orders of command, warring factions, insubordination, that kind of thing, with a father and son at the heart of it.
Disclaimers: I got this idea while watching A&E’s Horatio Hornblower, one of the few things that wasn’t a romance that has enthralled me to the point of being fannish. The overall theme, and many of the concepts of intrigue and adventure, are inspired by that production.
Further Disclaimer: Keep in mind: this is crack. Not so much in concept but execution. I’m playing fast and loose with characterizations and stuff like…setting (it’s a made up setting, not researched at all, and it's set there just because I thought it would be crazy). And I have no idea who else would want to read something like this besides me, but I'm having so much fun with it I decided to keep it as fun for me as possible. So I'm winging it. I've never done that before, so bear with me. Or you know, laugh at me; I don't care.
Title: Raising the Banner (1/1)
Length: 8,500 words
Rating: PG
Summary: “Origin” never happened; post-NFA, post-apocalyptic world. Focus on Angel, Connor, and Spike. See above note for more information about this universe. It's my new crack.
Raising the Banner
It was three weeks after life as anyone knew it went kerblooey. Spike was casing a motel. Should’ve been people here, he’d thought, huddled together in some of the rooms, but inside each door he opened, it smelled empty or like rotting bodies. Could take blankets from the empty ones, Spike guessed. And towels, and lots of the bathrooms still had little soap bars wrapped in paper. Spike thought about leaving the soap behind just to piss off Angel, but in the end Spike didn’t spite his face. Cutting off his nose wouldn’t get rid of this smell all over him.
Because they were out of towners, Spike guessed, that’s how come the motel was so bad. Spike had seen worse buildings in the past three weeks, but usually there were pockets of survivors here and there. The smell of fear, to overpower the smell of death. But tourists didn’t have their secret spots, their bomb shelters or their escape routes from the city. Didn’t have friends to band together with. Didn’t even have kitchen utensils to use as weapons. Just these . . . these damn bars of soap, and they just . . . all died, and Spike wished his stomach could heave over and out.
Instead, his temple really stung, and silver flashed in front of his eyes.
Speaking of kitchen utensils—
A knife. Oh, right, that would be blood there, on the side of his face.
“No, Cassidy!”
Gameface that was, and it was easy to tell where the knife had been lobbed from, and not just because of the foolish give-away yell.
Spike dropped the soap, jumped down from the second story rail, and sprinted through the parking lot. A man and a girl popped out of hiding from behind a dumpster and started running away. Man was just a boy, Spike realized—tall, but lanky still and kind of gawky. Good runner, though, freakishly faster than the girl, who couldn’t’ve been more than fourteen. Cassidy, wasn’t it, Spike guessed, the one who threw the knife. Good aim, that, and Spike hadn’t even heard them or smelled them before the act. Good, yeah—runners, shots, sense. Could use them, Spike knew.
In less than a minute, the vampire’s hand descended on the girl’s shoulder, and with the way the girl lashed back and fought, Spike wasn’t so sure any more. Good at the fight stuff, yeah, but perhaps not enough with the sense after all. Left to themselves, people went back to the wild, couldn’t play nice with others, couldn’t take orders. Maybe Cassidy was already too far gone to recruit. Spike had to tackle her down just to make her afraid.
But less than a minute after that, Spike was on the ground himself, five feet away, with a good one smacked right on the side of his head. The man-boy had come back for his girl and hit Spike—hard. Carried him through the bloody air. Blinking, Spike shook his head. The boy and girl had started running again. Rolling his eyes—which on second thought, made him dizzy—Spike got up in pursuit.
There was no question of not bringing them back with him, now. There was something wrong with that boy, and that meant the boy was either with them, or dead. No way you left a kid that could slam a vampire around like that on the loose. For one thing, it’d make Angel worried, and when he got worried, he got that little pissy face like he was passing stones all the time. For another thing, Spike was curious. And he was always up for a tussle.
This time, Spike grabbed the boy. The kid had slowed down to pace with his girl, so Spike didn’t have as much trouble as he would have catching up. Didn’t hold on for too long. Just jerked him around, and punched him in the face. “Not gonna hurt you,” he said, because he actually meant it, except for the part where he’d just punched the kid in the face, and the part where he really wanted a fight.
The boy lobbed a punch back—and missed. Kid was strong, but still had no idea what he was doing, Spike concluded. Disappointed, he caught the next punch the boy threw at him with his hand, closing fingers around that strangely big square of flesh. “Said, not gonna hurt you, but I will if I have to. Try it one more time.”
“Okay,” the boy said, and tried to knee his crotch.
“Jesus!” Spike yelped, because he almost had to let go of the kid to avoid it, and because the girl was banging on his back with both fists. She, it was obvious, didn’t have the same strength her man did. “Get her off it,” Spike growled, in face again, “or I’ll snap her in two.”
The boy looked at him for a minute. “Cassidy,” he said.
“What!” she demanded. “I’m getting him good!”
“Cassidy, cut it out.”
“Why do you—always—boss—me—around!” She was punctuating each word with a fist to Spike’s back. Spike rolled his eyes again. Glancing quickly at the boy, he loosened his grip on him to bring his other arm around to grab the girl and bring her around front. Then he let them both go.
They stared at him dumbly. Spike shrugged. “He’s just taking care of you, mite. He your big brother?”
Cassidy glanced nervously up at the boy. “Yeah. Yeah, and he can so kick your ass.”
Spike smirked, eyeing the boy. “That so, junior?”
The boy crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “What do you want?”
Spike’s eyes, still assessing the boy, went into slits. The kid had big hands, feet, but slim hips, narrow chest. Sky blue eyes and long hair that was stringy with sweat and hung in his eyes. Pale skin, baby face. Spike licked his lips. “Want?” he repeated, whole aura laconic.
“You’re not human,” the boy said, uncomfortable.
Spike smirked again. “Nope.”
The kid was still scowling from before. “Very fine weather we’re having.”
The sarcastic comment jolted Spike out of it. Sure, it was fun to make the kids afraid, but not if it would cost him their allegiance. “There more of you?”
“There’s—”
“There’s just us,” the boy said quickly, cutting off his sister.
“And you are?”
“Connor.”
The girl looked up at her brother, hesitant. Then, “Cassidy,” her voice a challenge directed at Spike.
The vampire nodded. “Matching. How precious. Well kids, what I want is to know whether you want to join the Resistance. Wait, let me rephrase that. I want you to join the Resistance and you’re going to want what I want real soon now.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Cassidy voted.
“Resistance?” Connor asked.
“Yeah. You know, the good guys. Fight the bad guys. Save puppies. Well, these days, eat puppies, but at least there’s none of that nailing stuff Angelus used to like to do, and you will get fed.”
Cassidy swallowed hard. “Fed?”
“Angelus?” Connor repeated.
Spike ignored that. “Got a bunch of people holed up in a safe place. You can come join us, get protected, supplies, in return help us out and we call it even.”
“It’s a trick,” Cassidy said.
“Help you out?” Connor repeated.
Spike shrugged. “Bollocks if I know. Haven’t got that part worked out yet. You can fight though, that’s good. Guess we might needs some . . . cooks, cleaners, that sort of tripe.”
“Show me,” Connor said.
Spike shook his head. “Good piece from here. We have to drive.” Spike watched Connor hesitate. “It’s more than just you two, innit?” After a moment, Connor nodded. “Who?” Spike persisted.
Connor cut Cassidy off before she could say anything again. “Families. Three of them.”
Spike raised a brow. “Yours?”
Another nod. “Parents.”
“And they’re . . . what, while you two kids are out . . .”
“Scouting,” Cassidy replied promptly.
Connor slit a glance at Cassidy. “We snuck out.”
Read: she snuck out, and he snuck out after her. That was nice. Spike liked that. “How many, again?”
“Eleven of us altogether.”
Spike nodded. “There are three hundred of us.”
Connor blinked. “With food.”
“Yeah, shelter, the whole three hundred yards, or whatever. You up for it, tyke?”
Connor thought about it. Cassidy looked at Connor, trusting him. Spike liked that, too. “Okay. Yeah. Just one thing. Don’t ever call me tyke.”
“Sure thing, kid. Now take me to your leader.”
The kids started off, and Spike followed a distance behind. Didn’t want to intimidate them. Besides, even though they were whispering, he could still hear every word.
“Are you sure?” Cassidy was asking.
Connor grabbed her hand. “I’ll protect you, Cass. Don’t you worry.”
Spike liked that most of all.
Angel didn’t like this at all.
He was sweaty and dirty and covered with goo, and the parcels he was carrying were unwieldy. When you thought about the world ending, which Angel admittedly had once or twice, you didn’t think about the tiny details, such as bags. Shopping bags, trashbags, canvas bags, who cared, something to carry the food they were looting from the drugstores and Wal-marts. He’d gone out to fight the demons they’d gotten wind were camped in the grocery store two blocks away, he hadn’t expected to come back with—
“Tea?” Harmony had her hands on her hips. “You were at Ralph’s for that long and you brought us tea?”
“It was there.” Angel shoved the boxes into the blond’s arms.
“I could use blood, Mister It’s Wrong To Eat Humans.” She thought a moment. “You didn’t even look for the shampoo, did you.”
“Wasn’t a shopping expedition. It’d already been looted; this was all they had.”
“Why are you always so huffy? Couldn’t you at least get—”
“Harm. Shut up.” Angel pushed past her.
Harmony had showed up at the Hyperion two days after the alley. Ripped up, scared, angry at Angel for sending her away when the world was ending anyway, she fit right in. Her year at Wolfram and Hart had . . . well, not payed off, considering that gross salary she’d made and the fact that she still didn’t know how to handle a fax machine, but she could do menial. He could give her the tea and make her deal with it. She kept up their stocks, even if she couldn’t be relied upon to remember what was in them, and she could find supplies when needed.
She was good enough, Angel told himself, and tried not to think more about it. Hell if he knew what to do with three hundred plus starving, helpless, homeless people, and the crux of it was: that wasn’t his responsibility, no matter what Spike said. Angel didn’t organize. He didn’t structure. He helped, he fought, he protected. And he would protect them, if only they would shut up, leave him alone, and not ask him questions like—
“Hey—hey, uh Angel, sir? They sent me to—uh . . . I don’t know what to . . . but it’s women’s room. Angel. Sir. I mean, off the food court. It’s flooded, see, and we were wondering if you could, uh—”
“I’m not a plumber,” Angel growled, and stalked away.
“Hey, but uh, you’re Angel, aren’t—”
Angel kept on walking. “I said leave me alone.”
After twenty steps someone else intercepted his path. A woman, in her fifties. Gemina, Angel remembered. One of the first survivors they’d found, brought to the Hyperion. Smart lady, wiry, resourceful. Kept coming up with things no one else could find. Like every single other survivor, Angel didn’t trust her as far as he could throw the Hyperion itself. “Hey Angel, was that Mack?” she asked. “Did he tell you about—”
“Don’t want to hear.”
“What about—”
“No.”
“Angel.” She stepped in front of him, bird-like body squaring its eensy shoulders. “They just can’t sleep like this any more. They need mattresses. They’re old. One woman, over eighty. Suffers from arthritis. If we just—”
“If you just,” Angel corrected. “Let me pass.”
The straight, regular features in her face crumpled. “But Angel, I thought you—”
“Gemina.” He settled big hands on her shoulders. There was a small perk of light in her eyes, that he remembered her name. “How many times does it take to tell you I don’t care? Find someone else. Right now I’m dirty, and I’m tired.”
“But, sir, I mean, Angel. It’s just—”
His thumbs pressed into her shoulders. “I’m also very, very hungry.”
Her eyes widened, and she began to tremble. He let her go, and she let him pass without a word.
Several minutes later, Angel slammed into the office at the back of the Barnes and Noble. “Tell me something good, Gunn.”
“Somewhere in your wicked, miserable past, there must’ve been a moment of truth?”
Angel stared at him. “Why did you let them do that Gilbert and Sullivan stuff?”
“That was Rogers and Hammerstein. And trust me, I don’t know. Got the insulin problem under control.”
Angel scrubbed his face. “What insulin problem?”
Gunn gave him a funny look. “The insulin problem. Diabetic dude, remember? Alfred Carson? Is this not ringing any bells?”
Frowning, Angel said, “Okay. So that’s fixed. Anything else?”
Gunn flipped through some papers. He was what, if Angel had been at Wolfram and Hart, might’ve been termed human resources. He fielded complaints, settled disputes, made people feel welcome and remembered names. Pretty good at it too, what with the powers of debate and smooth talking drilled into his skull. But he still couldn’t get up much, move about, due to the same wounds that prevented him from scouting or foraging like Angel, Spike, Illyria, and the healthier humans. Instead of Gunn going to the people, the people had to come to Gunn. And they did. But not enough. Angel disliked that, too.
“The women’s room off the food court—”
“Something good, I said.”
“Right. The Fist still wants to—”
“Fuck the Fist,” Angel said succinctly.
Gunn shook his head at the words. “Not touching that one. Too easy.” He rifled some more papers. “Spike’s back. Brought a pack with him. ‘Round a dozen.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you gonna go meet ‘em?”
Angel stiffened. “Why should I?”
Gunn just shrugged. “Hey, whatever man.”
“We have room?”
“Scads. They can take . . . that’s cool, Forever 21. Want to show them—”
“You show them.”
“Yeah, ‘cause they love a little intestine on their shirts now and then. See I would, but I got these stitches—”
“Okay. Fine. I’ll show them.”
And they would follow. And that’s what Angel disliked most.
They’d followed him into that alley. And after a night of fighting, they’d followed him into the Hyperion. The hotel had always been the fallback plan. If the battle lasted beyond the night, if they had to regroup, if they had to nurse survivors, they had the Hyperion. But as that night melted into days and days, the first regroup into an all-out war, the few survivors into hordes that needed more than just the nurse back to health, Angel knew it wasn’t going to work.
The Hyperion was flimsy, for one thing. Unstable with all those stories, lots of people easily downed with one razing. Another was supplies. There were beds and bathrooms enough, but they needed clothes, food, tools, and with Angel and team’s desertion, all that had been left there were the standard hotel amenities and a few random possessions Angel had stocked there. You could only burn so many Gideon Bibles for warmth. Then there was the fact that while the individual rooms provided the privacy he’d initially thought ideal for taking in the bystander or few that’d been hurt by the apocalypse, individual rooms were utterly inconvenient for hordes. Too much fear of what was going on behind those closed doors, too much running from room to room to assess problems, emergencies, too much space squabbling. Not enough room.
The worst of it wasn’t the fact of the shrinking physical space, but why it was shrinking: because people just kept coming. And staying. Those first few nights, all he and Spike had done was pull bodies from the wreckage while Illyria covered them. They’d brought in nearly fifty like that, the wounded and dying. Those people stayed and lived, or stayed and died. Then, in later days, the vampires began to take in the groups: children hiding in cellars, gangs wandering the streets, families running but not knowing what they were running from. The numbers swelled.
During the day, they left the front door open, and strangest of all was the way people just came. Of course, just as many were looking for someone to eat or kill as others were looking for someone to protect them. And not all of those kind were demons. Angel had killed more human beings in these past few days than he had put together in the last hundred years, and soon he would be able to start adding his unsouled days to that limit, too, he suspected.
But even the occasionally necessary murder of mortals was not enough to keep the numbers down. Everyday, he and Spike found more—victims trapped in rubble, clutches of old women bunkering down in nursing homes, sometimes whole housefuls fighting armies of demons alone. There were demons too, harmless demons, half demons, demons with souls, multitudes of every race and species helpless and on the run. And still, people just came: on foot, in cars, through the sewers, on bikes even, streaming in, like they knew the Hyperion was home.
Not for long. Five days ago, with nearly three hundred people in tow, Angel had instigated the move. He and Spike and Gunn had discussed their options—well, he and Gunn had discussed, Spike had argued, and Illyria had watched—and eventually settled on the mall, not so many miles away.
Angel would’ve liked somewhere underground. Somewhere less penetrable and out in the open. But there was no such stronghold nearby, and the move became more and more pressing. They needed somewhere relatively stable, and the mall was one of the few large buildings within a ten miles that hadn’t suffered serious damage, Spike reported. This was because there was a loose band squatting inside, run by someone called the Fist, that was unified enough to ward off most attacks, which also meant a lot of the supplies inside were intact. It was also in good shape because it was low to the ground, not vulnerable to the dragons and air attacks. They needed wide open spaces, food courts and department stores which could be emptied out to hold the wounded and the fearful together and unified. The needed somewhere big enough that it would take a more massive force than they had yet seen to surround them completely. And they needed somewhere big enough to hold them.
Angel had known they couldn’t stay at the Hyperion, but he hadn’t meant to be the one to move them. They were random people, from random walks of life, merely knit together by coincidence of location. They owed nothing to each other, or to him, and he had never asked it of them. When he’d decided to move to the mall, he hadn’t issued a command, just that information: he, Spike, Gunn, and Illyria were leaving, and if others wanted, they could come too. He was just a warrior, just a fighter, just one of them except stronger and on a blood diet. Just trying to survive, doing what he could. Protector, he’d said over and over again. Not leader. And yet he led them, and they followed.
They came in several runs of two vans Gemina had found—Angel still didn’t know where—and a few cars people had managed to keep or steal. There was resistance from the squatters, led by the Fist—mallrats, Gunn called the lot of them—but after a short struggle, they’d withdrawn to the west wing, and the Hyperion survivors took the east. After all, the latter had had Spike and Angel on their side, and for the single hour in which the skirmish lasted, there had been a strange unity among those from the Hyperion. They acted, Angel thought later, not like a random group, but like a people, bound by a common purpose. His people, bound by him, because the things he had shouted in that short struggle—shouted in the heat of battle, without knowing what he was doing—people listened to, were aroused by, and obeyed.
Angel had seen in the years at Angel Investigations that when people had larger than life problems, they wanted a larger than life hero. And despite the success of the whole crew, they sought Angel out in particular because he fulfilled their image of that sort of hero, no matter how flawed Angel really was. He had the swirly coat, the sword in hand, and most of all, he wasn’t quite human. But that was supposed to mean that he could fight the bad guys, not that he could cure diabetes with a touch and fix backed up plumbing. And yet, suddenly, he was not only Mr. Fix It, but the arbiter of every problem, the answer to every prayer. They trusted him.
He didn’t trust them. Couldn’t trust them; each one could be a spy of Wolfram and Hart’s or the Senior Partners’. Each one of them could be desperate enough, scared enough, just plain human enough to steal, murder, go berserk in all this madness and destroy everyone else.
Worse yet, in the past two days, the squatters from the west wing had begun to sidle up, interact with the people Angel had brought from the Hyperion. They’d begun to trade, combine efforts, make friends. And, through the grapevine, dump more problems on Angel. The Fist wanted to treaty with him—with Angel, he said, specifically. Angel thought it was swell if the mallrats wanted to join up, or even if they wanted to fight against them again. What he didn’t want was to be treated as the person who made these decisions, who was in charge of these things. Because with the squatters, they would be up to eight hundred, and it would only be a matter of time before they looked to Angel to lead them, too.
This new group Spike had brought in, they would look at him the same way also. Even if he refused to see them now, somehow the new ones always found out. They would be just another dozen, like the last, but it was another dozen who would give him a responsibility he didn’t want. Another dozen looking to him for something he couldn’t give. Another dozen unwilling weights on his shoulders, when all he wanted was some peace.
Gunn was talking about them. “Spike said you should take a look at them. One of them’s got super strength, or something?”
“They’re demons?” Angel asked, clicking out of the morbid thoughts.
“Must be. One of them anyway. Spike said he needed training.”
“If they want training, they can do training. Spike can do training. I’m not doing training.”
Gunn’s mouth tightened in a sardonic smile. “Hey. You do what you want. I don’t have Illyria’s hang up on feudal law. Democracy, that’s my vote. Doesn’t mean someone doesn’t need to organize a system where some people or hundred learn to throw a punch.”
“No organizing. I’m not organizing training, not organizing . . .” Angel made a vague gesture to the outside world. “Wolfram and Hart proved I can’t . . .” Another wave. “I don’t do that. I fight. I protect. I protect, not—”
“Good, because you suck at organizing. Angel, quit with the saying you’re not going to do and don’t do.”
Angel stood up. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, don’t do. That’s what I’m going to do. Not do. I mean—”
“We done here?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Cool. ‘Cause frankly? You smell.”
“What—”
“That was literal. The demon goo. You smell.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. Oh.”
Angel stopped by the security office to change his clothes, then found the men’s restroom and scrubbed himself down. Worst thing about the mall, as opposed to the Hyperion, was the lack of showers. Angel wasn’t sure he could stand it any more.
Maybe, he was thinking, he could leave. Just leave it, leave it all. Fight demons, sure, help people where he could, but never stay. Then they could expect nothing from him. Wouldn’t be right, Angel concluded, as he tried to tease the demon pus out of his hair, but there was something to what Gunn had said. He’d been reluctantly shouldering the burdens they all gave him because he felt he deserved them. The thing of it was, he deserved them because he’d caused all this. Desolation, despair, the helplessness that led to senseless following. They wanted him to lead them, but he didn’t know where to go. He was just as lost as they.
Now he at least knew what to tell them. He wasn’t their savior, their hero, or their leader. He would fight for them, but most likely die for them as well. When they looked at their future, they shouldn’t see him in it. Angel dried his hands, and left the bathroom.
It had only been five days, but even since then, The Gap had been designated the “new room. You know, where the new people go. Which makes sense,” Harmony had added, smacking her forehead. “It's like, a metaphor. The gap. Between the outside, and . . . you know, here.” “The outside” was something Angel had started hearing even back at the Hyperion. As if inside was both a community and a sanctuary.
A lot of the clothes racks and shelves had been picked over, and most had been moved, so the Gap was a large, mostly clear area where people coming in could drop supplies. Or bodies. The wounded came in through the entrance near here. And the dead.
Angel didn’t know who had started it, but when new groups came in, someone usually came to get him. Even Spike always sent someone for him—probably just to mock him, because Spike knew the way that people looked to him frustrated Angel. But Angel had always come, because he’d seen the merit in it, in the big shoulders, the coat, the sword making people feel safe.
Not after today. He wouldn’t come again. It fed to that idea that he was in charge here, when he was the first thing refugees saw when they arrived. These people, today—the people whose fear he could smell, milling around inside the mall entrance, standing below the awning of the Gap—he would tell them he wasn’t in charge. That this safety they felt in his presence—yes, it meant he could fight demons, but he couldn’t fix the air conditioning or settle their disputes with their neighbors’ space. He wouldn’t solve their problems, attend their needs, or lead them. They were on their own.
Angel tilted his head, still smelling the fear . . . and stood stock still.
He took one step, two, and rounded the corner, where the sunlight of the mall entrance spilled onto the group scattered in front of The Gap. Eleven people, whispering quietly, their voices like “shush” sounds in the morning light, ragged, already too thin, old . . . young . . .
Laying eyes on them, Angel’s world shifted. All of it, this world he thought he had ended, jilted a little to the left.
He stood there. After several minutes, a silence fell, and eleven pairs of eyes—brown, green, amber . . . blue, looked back at him. Angel strode forward to them, to the edge of the shadow.
“I’m Angel,” he said, after a moment’s silence.
After a small hesitation, a man from the group stepped forward. Salt and pepper colored hair, mostly salt, large, straight dignified features, blue eyes. “Reilly,” the man said.
Angel closed his eyes at that, briefly. “Yes.” His voice was soft. “And the others?”
“My family,” he gestured back at a women and . . . another two. “These are Elliot's,” gesturing to a woman and a little boy, “And Gutierrez’s.” He gestured at an old gentleman and a middle-aged one, and three children pressed up against their legs.
“And you’re here for?” Angel asked. Still that gentle tone.
Reilly looked confused. “Spike said . . . you know Spike?”
“I know Spike,” Angel said, his eyes holding Reilly’s even.
Reilly drew himself up, scowling a little. “Well, he said we could come here, and that it was food, and shelter, and protected. And that to stay, we had to work, but that it would be worth our while.”
Angel blinked. This was what Spike was telling people?
“Well,” Reilly said again, looking back at the three families, “we’re willing to work, whatever we can do to help. And if this is the place for us—we’ll . . . well, we’ll do it.
Angel noticed the “if”. A caution, as if the man wanted to assess the place before he committed his family to it. Angel turned that over in his head. “You’ll stay,” he said abruptly.
He finally turned away from Reilly. He looked over the rest of them, all except one, eyes scanning each of them, as if in searching them he could find the one he really wanted to see. He shifted his gaze back to Reilly, because seeing him was so much easier. “How are you? All of you? Not hurt? Made it okay? Need medical . . . something?”
Reilly’s eyes passed briefly over the families again. He didn’t leave anyone out. “We’re hungry,” he said, turning back to Angel, “and we think Nadia’s arm is broken.” He gestured at a girl, the one pressed up against her father’s legs. “But other than that, mostly just cuts and bruises.”
“All of you,” Angel insisted. “You’re all okay. Except for the arm,” he amended. “But all of you?” His eyes began to stray . . . to the floor, to the teenage boy’s shoes, up his baggy jeans . . . Angel snapped his eyes up to Reilly.
“Yes. Well, we—they . . . already lost some.”
Angel blinked. “What?”
“Becky’s husband,” Reilly said, gesturing at the family he had named Elliot. “And her daughters. And Guadalupe’s wife.” A gesture at the Gutierrez’s.
Angel looked at the bereaved families. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
There was a silence. “Spike said we get to fight,” someone said suddenly.
Angel looked over. Fourteen year old girl, dark haired, amber eyed. “You’re . . .” he faltered.
“Cassidy,” she repeated, defiant.
“Spike said it was the Resistance.” Resonant, masculine, but still with a touch of youth in his voice. Angel at last looked over to the teenager standing beside Cassidy. His eyes locked eyes with blue ones. If Angel had been alive, his heart would have been beating very, very fast. “Connor,” the boy supplied, without Angel having to ask.
The vampire swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “I . . .” he croaked, and tried again. “Resistance?”
Connor nodded, then impatiently brushed hair out of his face. “Fighting bad guys? And some crap about puppies?”
“Connor,” a woman’s voice said, in half-hearted remonstrance.
Connor gave a rueful half smile in acknowledgment, his eyes not leaving Angel’s.
Angel’s knees felt weak. “You can’t fight,” he said at last. “It wouldn’t be safe. You have to stay safe.” He blinked, and stepped back, looking around again. “All of you. Safe.”
“It’s not the Resistance?” One of the Gutierrez children. Not Nadia, the kid with the broken arm. Too young to be relieved or disappointed. Just curious.
“What is it, exactly?” Reilly wanted to know. “This . . . a commune?”
“This is . . .” Angel looked around him, into The Gap, into the sunlight pouring in the large glass entrance wall, not into the group of people. He was too conscious of his eyes, of what they were looking at every moment, of what they were not looking at. He tried to settle his gaze, focusing on Reilly again. “It’s a sanctuary.”
Someone made a movement. Becky Elliot. “That’s what we were led to believe,” she said.
Guadalupe Gutierrez, Nadia’s father, spoke. Angel had never been good with the names, barely remembered Gemina, whom they’d pulled out of the rubble the very second night. But these names, here, today, every single one of them would be burned into his brain until the day he fell to dust. “Yeah,” Gutierrez was saying, “but what is it? How do you run things?”
“Run things,” Angel repeated. He swung his gaze to Gutierrez. “Through me. It goes . . . through me.” He swallowed, licked his lips. “You need help, you come to me. Every single one of you. You come to me.”
“Okay, but what—”
Angel was still talking. “You have a problem. You need protection. You need food, clothes; you need . . . light fixtures. You come to me. Someone bothering you, I’ll take care of you. Someone after you, I’ll take care of you. Someone . . . steals your socks, I’ll take care of you.”
“All very fine.” A woman, Reilly’s wife, spoke. “But who are you again? And how are you going to do this? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s . . .” She gestured vaguely outside.
“The end of the world?” Angel asked. “No. This place. . .” He looked around again, and at last, his eyes came to rest on Connor again. “I’m starting a new world. Here. As of right now. And it’s going to be a safe world, and good world, and m—our . . . your son—sons and daughters. Your children are going to grow up, and they’re going to—going to live.” He looked, then, at Connor’s mother. “They’re going to live.”
Reilly stepped back a pace, glancing at his wife. “You didn’t answer her question.”
“I’m Angel,” Angel said again. “Just Angel. I’m the leader of the Resistance.”
Connor didn’t like him at all.
Everything this “Angel” had told them so far was a lie.
“This is where you’ll stay,” Angel was saying. Okay, that bit maybe wasn’t a lie. Maybe, if they decided to stay at all.
“Forever 21?” Cassidy asked skeptically.
“All of us?” Becky asked.
Angel looked them over. “There a problem?”
“No,” Reilly said quickly. He turned to Becky. “We stick together.”
Connor smiled at that. Becky had lost everything. Well, they all had, but she’d lost everyone as well, except for Ian. They’d found her on Day Twelve (that’s how Connor counted days after the—well, it. With the dragons, and everything). She’d been stuck sitting there staring like she sometimes did, with Ian naked and clawing at her face. Connor’s parents, without asking who she was or anything else, took her and her son under their wing right then, just like that.
Sometimes she still froze up, or couldn’t stop crying, terrified that she would be left on her own again. But his parents didn’t let her out of their sight. They’d always been good at that, at making sure you weren’t alone. It’d annoyed the hell out of him when Connor was around fourteen, but these days it made him really proud. His dad had promised Becky that first day that they wouldn’t leave her, and they wouldn’t.
Didn’t promise to take care of her, because no matter how strong his parents were, they couldn't stop bad things from happening.
As Angel explained about the store, where to go for Nadia's arm, bathrooms and food, how a guy called the Fist ruled the other half of the mall and it wasn’t safe to go over there, how he was going to get on that, how he was going to make it safer, better, Connor watched. The first thing he’d noticed about Angel was that he was too clean. His clothes weren’t ragged and his leather coat was fancy, and it looked like he’d spent hours on his hair. The way he’d approached them near the mall entrance, looking like a million dollars, then told them they didn’t need to worry any more ‘cause he was here—there was something wrong about that. It was too smooth and suave, too sleek. Designed to seem like an answer to a prayer.
Next thing Connor hadn’t liked was the way Angel acted. He’d made his dad repeat what Spike had told him about this place, then made Connor repeat what Spike had told them about the Resistance. Aggressive, uppity, like he was testing them. Which was okay, Connor got that, but he shouldn’t get to test them without them getting to test back. Instead, Angel acted like he was already in charge of them, broke into that spiel about how much he was going to take care of them now. How much he owned them now.
And what was up with that, anyway? They didn’t need any follow the leader. His family was doing a really good job taking care of itself. Except maybe Cassidy, but she was little still. In fact, Connor thought, looking at Becky, they were doing a really good job of taking care of others as well.
Angel was repeating the spiel now. Connor shoved his hands in his pockets, just watching. The next thing he’d noticed, listening to Angel talk, was he didn’t breathe. It was a thing Connor was finding out, along with the weird badass strength he didn’t know he had until that van hit him; he could sense things. Connor guessed the others hadn’t noticed Angel wasn’t human. Angel had lied about that, too.
He was a vampire, Connor guessed. Connor had noticed the way Angel hadn’t stepped into the sunlight, and there was that lack of breathing thing. Connor was quickly learning about the things that went bump in the night, and Spike had told them straight up that he was a vampire, and could hear their blood pumping, and liked to kill things so watch out.
And Spike had made no pretences about what they’d find at the mall. He’d said there was supplies and protection, none of this personal care-giver crap. He’d also said there was stuff they could do in return, like a fair trade, which made the whole deal sound much more real. The way Angel acted, it was like he was playing king making a fairytale kingdom.
And that was the crux of it. Connor guessed if you were a monster or demon or something, you might not want people to know what you really were, if you wanted them to trust you. And Angel obviously wanted them to trust him. Connor might’ve, if Angel hadn’t been lying about other stuff too. Hey, if Angel could’ve made the peachy keen world he promised, Connor’d forgive him for lying about the fact that he secretly had a bumpy face.
But Angel couldn’t stop bad things from happening any more than his parents could, vampire or no. He couldn’t make a peachy keen world for everyone. And this whole mall thing wasn’t peachy or keen, or even cool. Living in Forever 21? Angel acted like he was doing so much for them, but Connor didn’t see any big defenses around that made this place safer than the motel. He didn’t see a whole lot of supplies, either. Most of the clothes in here had been picked over, the racks all bent and useless. There weren’t even any beds, or any—
“Showers?” Gutierrez was asking. They hadn’t had hot water at the motel for two weeks, but they’d still been able to rinse off. Even then though, they still felt dirty all the time.
“Yeah,” Angel was saying. “We’re working on that. You know, we were at this hotel, originally. It didn’t work out, but the hot water . . . that was nice.”
Cassidy crossed her arms over her chest. “We were at a motel. How’s this better?”
Connor could tell his mom wanted to tell her to be quiet. Connor wanted to tell her too, but they didn’t, because they all had the same question. Connor had just wanted to wait until Angel was out of the way to ask it.
“We’re . . . working on it. The mall is a temporary holding place until we can get somewhere . . . better. But we’re going to get mattresses, and stuff. I’ll show you what we have now. Get that arm fixed up," he added, nodding at Nadia. "And you can meet some people you can come to when I’m not here. Come on.”
They filed out of the store so they could follow the leader again through the mall. As Cassidy passed by him, Angel smiled. “Hey. Cassidy, right? Things are going to be okay. I promise.”
Cassidy lifted her nose. “We’ll see.”
Angel glanced uncertainly at Connor as Cassidy marched on by. Connor didn’t look at him. He really, really didn’t like him.
“Spike,” Angel said. “I was looking for you.”
Spike scowled, swinging the door shut behind him. “Were not.”
“I meant, I was going to look for you. I was about to.” At Spike’s raised brow, Angel rolled his eyes. “I mean, I wanted to see you.”
“Look all you like. Me, I’d be happy to never lay eyes on your mug again.”
“Then what are you doing in here?”
Spike drummed his fingers behind him on the door. “Was hoping you’d be out. Was going to short sheet your bed.”
“I don’t have sheets.”
“Pity.”
“Spike, I don’t have a bed.”
Spike did that thing with his tongue. Angel hated that thing with his tongue. “Pity,” Spike said again, but this time he meant it. He rocked his hips back into the door. “Always walls, you know.”
“God, you’re . . .”
“I’m? Right now, I’m on tenterhooks, mutton head.”
Angel scowled. “’Mutton head’? Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Trying it on for size.”
“Spike, have you been telling people we’re . . . ‘the Resistance’?”
“Might’ve done.” Spike finally moved off the door, leaning across where Angel was sitting to rifle through Angel’s things. There wasn’t much. Some clothes Angel had had at the Hyperion, some weapons. They were in two neat piles on the desk, in the security office of the mall where Angel had chosen to live. Angel rolled his chair back so Spike wouldn’t brush against him, annoyed, but not enough to fight about it.
“Hello, what have we here?” Spike said, walking around the desk to pick up the slime-covered pants Angel had shucked out of earlier that day and left on the floor, not wanting to touch them more than he had to. Spike didn’t have a problem with that. He was feeling them up all over.
“Those are mine,” Angel said, but made no effort to take back the pack of cigarettes Spike had found in the pocket. “Why are you doing that?”
“Something to do with my hands, feels good, more badass than you, doesn’t hurt my lungs, girls love it. Pick one.” Spike pulled out a stick, then his lighter, which he still carried even though it had been a week since he had last been able to get his hands on something to smoke.
“I meant, why are you telling people we’re the Resistance?”
“Got to have a name, don’t we?”
“Why?”
Spike slid down the wall to squat on the floor, neglecting the chair two feet away. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. “You don’t get it, do you,” he told the cigarette. “They want to feel like they’re a part of something. A name, it unites. Lights a fire.” He tapped ash out over his knee onto the floor. He put the cigarette back into his mouth and looked at Angel. “Give them that, and they follow you.”
“Okay.”
Spike’s mouth fell open, and his hand had to come up quick to catch the cigarette. “Huh? Ouch. Fuck. What?” He put his burnt finger into his mouth for a second, looked at Angel, who was smirking, scowled, and removed it, shoving the cigarette back in instead.
“I said okay.”
“Okay to what?” Spike asked suspiciously.
“Where’d you come up with ‘Resistance,’ though? It’s cheesy.”
“You’re one to talk.” Spike breathed out a swirl of smoke. “’S what we do, innit? Resist.”
“And you’ve been telling people to come here and—what, work for us?”
“Got to do something, don’t they? Can’t just pile ‘em up in here and leave them to themselves. Most got it into their heads they’re gonna have to lift a finger if they’re gonna survive, but it begs some kind of system. Give and take, yeah? And ways to regulate. Who does what, who’s gone here for food, there for supplies, all that bloody mess.”
“Okay.”
Spike stood up, frown deep in his face. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’re you trying to get out of me?”
“Huh?”
“This some kind of play?”
“What?” Angel said. “No. I agree with you. We need a system. It needs a name. Those things make sense.”
“But I’ve been saying for weeks—”
“You were right. I was wrong.” Off the look on Spike’s face, Angel almost laughed. “Don’t get worked up about it. I won’t say that again. Ever. I can guarantee, if you want.”
“Worked up?” Spike threw himself into the chair across the desk from where Angel was sitting. “You’re such a fucking ponce,” he said finally.
“One thing about the name,” Angel said. “When you tell people, make sure you tell them it’s not just about resisting. I mean, it is, in the state of the world sense, but it’s about protection too.”
“Oh, right. You want me to pick up your Terminator gig. Ta, but no.”
“Huh? Terminator?”
Spike’s voice took on a stilted, deep accent. “Come with me if you want to live.”
“I don’t say that.”
“Yes you do.”
“I say, come with me and I’ll protect you.”
Spike smirked, apparently not even feeling the need to point out that change in phrase changed very little in meaning. “See the new ones I brought?” he asked instead.
Angel tried not to fidget. “Yes. I put them in Forever 21. Showed them the ropes.”
“But did you see the boy?”
Angel moved the stake on his desk an inch to the left. “What boy?”
“Shit. Didn’t Gunn—”
“That boy.” Angel nodded quickly. “Sure. Gunn told me. They—the family, I mean, didn’t mention it to me personally. The superpower thing.”
“Yeah. Could toss you around like . . .” Spike cast about. “Like cotton panties,” he finished, toeing Angel’s pants on the floor. “He’ll be good for patrols and that.”
Angel stood up, turning his back so Spike couldn’t see his face. “No. No, not—he’s young. He’s too young to go . . .” Angel made a vague gesture. “Out there.”
Angel could hear Spike shrug behind him. “So, send him with Blue. It’s not like—”
“No.”
“You think he’s pretty.”
“No!”
“Come on. You think he’s a doll, don’t you, and you just want to—”
Angel just wanted to rip out Spike’s throat, but then Spike would know. Not the truth, but that Angel cared, and even that was too much. No one could know. No one could even guess, or else Connor would be in danger again. And it was completely secondary in Angel’s mind, but Connor in danger put everyone else in danger too. These demons on the loose, so many out in the open now and free to wander at will—they would come for him, more than had ever surrounded the Hyperion when Connor was just a baby. And Connor . . . least of all could Connor ever know. It would ruin everything Angel had tried to do.
And even though Angel ruined everything else, he hadn’t ruined that. The day he had taken over Wolfram and Hart, Angel had had a perfect world built for Connor, so Connor could be happy. Now Angel just needed to build a world for everyone else, even if he had to lay every single stone of it. So Connor could be happy.
Angel forced himself to empty his face, turn around, give a little shrug. “I like his sister. Seems like she’s got guts.”
“She’s not superwoman,” Spike pointed out. “And she hasn’t got blonde hair.”
Angel let the upset show on his face. As much as he hated fighting with Spike about Buffy, it was at least allowed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” Spike said, shrugging. “’Cept something about her . . . She’ll grow up and look like Darla. Even without the hair.”
Angel contained a shudder. “They don’t look like Darla.”
“They? Sure, the boy does too. Girly, like that.”
Angel forced himself to shrug again. “The other thing, about when you bring people in . . . to the Resistance,” Angel said, tasting the name again. Spike looked like he was going to buck at the subject change, but instead he just raised a brow. “You tell them I’m the leader.”
“I’ll tell them you’re a poof, and like to look over the boys I bring in for a wank or two.” Which, in Spike to English, meant “okay”. Spike leaned in to smush out his cigarette on Angel’s desk, watching Angel carefully. “’Bout bloody time you stepped up,” he said, leaning back. “Going to meet with the Fistjob now?”
“Yeah. Hopefully he wants to join up.” Spike nodded. Angel frowned, watching the other vampire. “I don’t understand you,” he said finally. “Every waking minute you spend defying me. Even when . . .”
“Even when you still liked it when I called you Daddy?”
“Even when you wanted to,” Angel snapped, guilt and the image of Connor’s face sharpening his voice. “But you’re alright with me being in charge of everyone else. You ask for it.”
“Didn’t ask. Told. I’m the power behind the throne, see?”
“No.”
Spike waved a hand randomly. “They come to you. Who knows why. No, I know why. It’s the big hero type. I’m not that.”
“You wanted to be.”
“What, with the cup? No. Point there is it’d be a bit of alright to live. Aside from that, I want to live. Want to Dudley Do-Right, yeah—fight the fight, save the puppies—”
“You’re always stuck on the puppies,” Angel muttered.
“Save the world, if it gets in my way. What I don’t want is to get bogged down under everyone else. That’s you. I get to be in everything, with everyone. You never wanted that anyway. You need me to do it for you. It’s a checks and balance thing, yeah? You get stuck being king. I get to be free. The one with the real power. Too bad for you. It’s the rugby shoulders.”
“I’m not king.”
“Whatever you are, I don’t want to be it.”
“I knew that already.”
“Then Angel.” Spike’s voice was so low that Angel felt as though they were sitting much closer. Spike’s eyes were very blue. “Why do you even need to ask?” He sat back. “Bloody wanker.”