One for the Team (2/3)
Author Brutti ma buoni
Title One for the Team
Rating This part PG13; more magic, less admin
Characters Angel, Lorne, Willow and ensemble
Word count c3000 overall, this part c800
A/N: part two of Angel in the Rulesverse. Part one is here. Still just about a WIP but I'm hoping to post the last part this week.
The months passed. Many months. The Slayer Support Operatives were named, and their training centre completed, and the first recruits began to gain powers, confidence, possibilities. Their ramshackle training operation started to look like a workable plan.
Cordelia’s hospital bills fell due again. Angel brought them up in the monthly team meeting, right after the plumbing costs and before the plans for a graduation party for the demon wranglers. This was how normal it had become, that their friend was a vegetable on life support. Wesley added it to the costs for the quarter.
They coughed, slightly, and prepared to move on.
Then Harmony said, “But, don’t you guys fix this stuff? It could be, like, a class project. But, you know, safe and effective.”
Of course, no one took Harmony’s ideas seriously. It was a total coincidence that Wesley’s classes started work on Cordelia’s case two months later.
They got nowhere. It wasn’t a job for newbies. But they’d given Willow a starting point.
*
When Angel raised the issue, he wasn’t even surprised when Giles asked whether trying to heal the profoundly comatose Cordelia was a good idea.
Angel said, “I would think you might want to try and save one of my dying friends. One of these days.”
Because he wasn’t ever going to get over Fred. Not completely. Even if he understood what Giles had to do, and that Fred was gone long before he called. Even if he sometimes looked at Illyria and didn’t hate what she represented.
Giles said, “Yes. Of course you feel that way. But I would ask you to remember that saving Fred would have destroyed half the world. Do you know what it would cost to save Cordelia?”
No. Nor cared, either. Which was dangerous.
He wanted to loathe Giles. But he knew evil, and Giles wasn’t it. Wasn’t going to stop trying to help Cordy, though. Whatever the cost.
Probably.
*
Willow remembered Fred too. She cried, a little, much too late to help Fred.
Then she got to work.
This wasn’t Willow as Angel remembered her. Not cute, quiet, twitchy Willow from high school. Not even the thinner, still-quieter woman who’d visited them with news of Buffy’s death, and later returned to fix his soul yet again. This was a Willow who seemed other-worldly at times. Who forgot to eat, or to speak. There were times when she appeared to be somewhere other than LA. Lorne said it was possible, if she was as powerful as he thought. Maybe she really wasn’t there.
Willow scared the trainees. They fought to avoid her, even the most magically-adept. Too much power, perhaps.
Harmony wasn’t afraid, but Willow simply looked through her, and she kept out of the way. You are not important said Willow’s eyes. When Harmony understood unspoken social messages, you knew it was serious.
Lorne did his comradely best to engage with Willow’s work, and got absent responses for a while. She wouldn’t sing for Lorne, though. Polite, but definite. Wesley seemed pretty relieved about that. Angel tried not to speculate on what Lorne might have heard; or remember what Wolfram and Hart took out of Lorne’s brain, when Cordelia/Jasmine sang, years ago. That wasn’t Willow, of course. No way.
But one day, she didn’t come down from her room, and when they went to check, she’d left only a note. Got to think on this one. Gonna take some real juice. I’ll be back.
*
Willow came back over a year later, long after they had stopped hoping.
“See, the thing with the visions was blocking the energies. There’s like this extra layer of complexity in Cordy’s brain. Plus, the semi-demonness, that’s even more layering. Tricksy stuff.”
She was more cheerful this time, when talking about the magicks. Didn’t talk of much else. Kennedy seemed to be out of the picture now, though even that wasn’t easy to deduce from the little Willow let slip about anything other than the spell she was casting. She seemed to have fined down, to be a magic maker above all. Nothing else made her spark.
It took four SSOs to support Willow’s magicks. Another three simply to gather the ingredients for the spell. A team additionally to enchant the hospital staff to ignore the intrusion of the others. In the centre of it all, Willow, in a whirlwind of power, eyes black, hair and skin glowing white, a colourless ghost-corpse of inhumanity, pouring life into Cordelia.
They lost an outstanding SSO that night. Danny Bryan: still alive but magically powerless forevermore. Angel wasn’t surprised. The demon in him cowered from Willow's spell. The remnants of a man wanted to run and hide.
But the spell worked. They could tell, because Cordelia’s eyes opened, and she started to scream.
*
Final part is here
Title One for the Team
Rating This part PG13; more magic, less admin
Characters Angel, Lorne, Willow and ensemble
Word count c3000 overall, this part c800
A/N: part two of Angel in the Rulesverse. Part one is here. Still just about a WIP but I'm hoping to post the last part this week.
The months passed. Many months. The Slayer Support Operatives were named, and their training centre completed, and the first recruits began to gain powers, confidence, possibilities. Their ramshackle training operation started to look like a workable plan.
Cordelia’s hospital bills fell due again. Angel brought them up in the monthly team meeting, right after the plumbing costs and before the plans for a graduation party for the demon wranglers. This was how normal it had become, that their friend was a vegetable on life support. Wesley added it to the costs for the quarter.
They coughed, slightly, and prepared to move on.
Then Harmony said, “But, don’t you guys fix this stuff? It could be, like, a class project. But, you know, safe and effective.”
Of course, no one took Harmony’s ideas seriously. It was a total coincidence that Wesley’s classes started work on Cordelia’s case two months later.
They got nowhere. It wasn’t a job for newbies. But they’d given Willow a starting point.
*
When Angel raised the issue, he wasn’t even surprised when Giles asked whether trying to heal the profoundly comatose Cordelia was a good idea.
Angel said, “I would think you might want to try and save one of my dying friends. One of these days.”
Because he wasn’t ever going to get over Fred. Not completely. Even if he understood what Giles had to do, and that Fred was gone long before he called. Even if he sometimes looked at Illyria and didn’t hate what she represented.
Giles said, “Yes. Of course you feel that way. But I would ask you to remember that saving Fred would have destroyed half the world. Do you know what it would cost to save Cordelia?”
No. Nor cared, either. Which was dangerous.
He wanted to loathe Giles. But he knew evil, and Giles wasn’t it. Wasn’t going to stop trying to help Cordy, though. Whatever the cost.
Probably.
*
Willow remembered Fred too. She cried, a little, much too late to help Fred.
Then she got to work.
This wasn’t Willow as Angel remembered her. Not cute, quiet, twitchy Willow from high school. Not even the thinner, still-quieter woman who’d visited them with news of Buffy’s death, and later returned to fix his soul yet again. This was a Willow who seemed other-worldly at times. Who forgot to eat, or to speak. There were times when she appeared to be somewhere other than LA. Lorne said it was possible, if she was as powerful as he thought. Maybe she really wasn’t there.
Willow scared the trainees. They fought to avoid her, even the most magically-adept. Too much power, perhaps.
Harmony wasn’t afraid, but Willow simply looked through her, and she kept out of the way. You are not important said Willow’s eyes. When Harmony understood unspoken social messages, you knew it was serious.
Lorne did his comradely best to engage with Willow’s work, and got absent responses for a while. She wouldn’t sing for Lorne, though. Polite, but definite. Wesley seemed pretty relieved about that. Angel tried not to speculate on what Lorne might have heard; or remember what Wolfram and Hart took out of Lorne’s brain, when Cordelia/Jasmine sang, years ago. That wasn’t Willow, of course. No way.
But one day, she didn’t come down from her room, and when they went to check, she’d left only a note. Got to think on this one. Gonna take some real juice. I’ll be back.
*
Willow came back over a year later, long after they had stopped hoping.
“See, the thing with the visions was blocking the energies. There’s like this extra layer of complexity in Cordy’s brain. Plus, the semi-demonness, that’s even more layering. Tricksy stuff.”
She was more cheerful this time, when talking about the magicks. Didn’t talk of much else. Kennedy seemed to be out of the picture now, though even that wasn’t easy to deduce from the little Willow let slip about anything other than the spell she was casting. She seemed to have fined down, to be a magic maker above all. Nothing else made her spark.
It took four SSOs to support Willow’s magicks. Another three simply to gather the ingredients for the spell. A team additionally to enchant the hospital staff to ignore the intrusion of the others. In the centre of it all, Willow, in a whirlwind of power, eyes black, hair and skin glowing white, a colourless ghost-corpse of inhumanity, pouring life into Cordelia.
They lost an outstanding SSO that night. Danny Bryan: still alive but magically powerless forevermore. Angel wasn’t surprised. The demon in him cowered from Willow's spell. The remnants of a man wanted to run and hide.
But the spell worked. They could tell, because Cordelia’s eyes opened, and she started to scream.
*
Final part is here