Episode 2: The Wolves, My Love, Will Come (Part 2)
This is the second part of an episode, read Part 1 here.
In spite of the automated air conditioning systems throughout the building, despite the additional filters needed for that particular department, the air in the main science lab still seemed stale to Wesley as he opened the door and led Coral inside. It wasn’t just that the labs had been quiet since they had finished studying Illyria, it was knowing that Fred was never going to smile down at him from her office window again, and he would not be sharing secrets with her on the floor while intoxicated.
How long would it take for the air in here to smell fresh again? How soon would he walk in here expecting to see the face of the woman next to him, rather than the one he could still picture perfectly looking at him from across the lab?
“And this, as you can see, is our main lab,” he advised her, waving his hand around to draw attention to certain features.
He stood back, allowing her to take a long look around. Oddly enough, he was reminded of the way Illyria had first studied the lab recently after her arrival, only Coral showed more apprehension.
“Something the matter?” he asked, catching the look on her face.
“This,” she said, placing her hand on a large piece of equipment, covered in dials, and likely worth a small fortune, before continuing, “I don’t know what it does. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called.”
He looked away for a moment, remembering seeing Fred using that very machine. He hadn’t known what it did back then either, but she had, she and her knack for figuring these things out. A smile touched his lips at the thought, one that would not diminish in the face of her being gone, because she had remained brilliant to the end. And none of them had a hope without her.
“Nor do I,” he confided, “but I’d imagine we could summon the instruction manual on one of the templates sometime, if you’d like.”
She smiled, but clearly her worries were not allayed.
“Where’s everyone else? Wouldn’t they know? Or do I have to run this enormous lab all by myself?”
Wesley frowned, and he tried to remember what had led to the absence of lab technicians.
“There were others, they all went off to…” he trailed off, then met her eyes and finished his sentence, “I have absolutely no idea where they went.”
He stepped closer, reasoning that in a lab this size, staying back near the doorway to let her explore on her own was only likely to make the experience more intimidating. They slowly walked around the lab, with him pointing out various bits he could remember the names of. They were mostly the bits so simple she’d been using them since her school years, but it was the best he could manage at short notice. A few minutes later, she stopped in front of an expensive black piece of equipment with several lenses and LCD monitors, that he had a feeling Fred had once called an Ion Microscope.
“I’m a chemist,” she told him dejectedly, “I don’t know a thing about half of this stuff.”
“You’re all we’ve got,” he said sympathetically, but resolutely announced, “so you’ll have to do.”
She remained clearly unconvinced, but focused on his exact words instead, her eyebrow raising in both curiosity and sarcastic gratitude.
“Well Jesus, you sure know the way to a woman’s heart.”
He turned away from her slightly, so she could still see his face, but he was free to fix his eyes somewhere in the middle distance, encapsulated by the memories playing before them.
“The last time I checked,” he said dreamily, “it was straight through her ribcage.”
*
Really not a bad office we’ve got here, he thought to himself as he rearranged his desk for the twenty-third time, positioning the lamp on the right, dragging the pencil pot forwards, and straightening up the various documents again. Across the room, the Blue fairy was inspecting the walls with almost scientific precision.
“This location would be best for the weapons cabinet,” she said after a long while, her voice filling the large, sparse room.
He looked up, taking in the spot she had picked at one end of the room, a fair distance from any of the windows, and easily accessible when pinned down behind her desk. He had a really good feeling about this new partnership they had formed, of all the people he had met here in LA, Illyria was the closest he had found to a kindred spirit. And between the two of them, their existing reputations ought to bring them to public attention quickly enough.
“Looks good to me,” he confirmed, and she turned and headed out of the room. She walked in that determined, focused way that he had seen her display more of as she grew used to her human body, and presumably she went to find someone who would build her the weapons chest she desired. He’d have to sort out the contents for it, he supposed; a couple of broadswords each, a selection of axes, some sai, perhaps combat knives, and a good supply of stakes. Would be nice if we could get something bigger, too. Bit of firepower never hurt anyone, after all. Well, it did, but that was mostly what it was there for.
*
“Objection, your honour,” Gunn interrupted, his pulse racing like it hadn’t done in months, only hoping that the sweat patches weren’t visible on his robe.
“The prosecution suggests that the defendants and their species exist as cattle, however cattle are bred specifically for the purpose of slaughter, I must insist that human beings are not.”
The judge, who looked remarkably human himself, nodded, and they both looked over at the lawyer for the prosecution, the most qualified of the six werewolves that were behind the whole thing. The man shot him a brief glare, and then turning to the front of the court and responding.
“I was insinuating,” he said slyly, his undisguised Russian accent adding a tone to his delivery Gunn found rather menacing, “that Human Race is pest, whose numbers must be controlled. As this is way in nature, so should it be in supernature.”
The judge motioned for the prosecutor to continue, who began a slow walk back and forth across the Pantheon floor.
“Humans breed constantly, population grows always larger. We prefer to hunt moderately to keep numbers down than large-scale cull each century.”
The prosecutor halted, regarding the jury carefully. His beard and moustache, black, but flecked with grey, did nothing to reduce the animal nature of his appearance, despite of the navy blue robe he wore.
“Your race,” he said, turning to Gunn, “has ravaged land with war and cutting down forests, destroyed seas with pollution and much fishing, and poisoned air with factory and motorcar. Is there anyone in room,” he asked, spreading his arms, “who can think of single positive thing that human race has done for any other species?”
*
A knock came at the office door, which was strange, because Spike didn’t know anyone who would knock. Puzzled, he considered who had thought it sensible to give an office glass walls, yet a solid door, the one bit he might like to look through. With luck his visitor would be the secretary he had asked for; Harmony had warned him that the Watcher had already arranged it.
“Come in,” he called, without looking up from his desk.
He heard the door open and someone step into the room, a young woman, judging from the sound of her heels. Still fretting on his list over the same line as he had been considering for the last ten minutes, he pushed the paper aside and looked up, taking the girl in at a glance. Thin build, medium height, glossy brown hair, blue eyes, cream-coloured skirt and jacket combination, similar to Harm’s but more tasteful, with a pastel blue blouse. It was only then, after focusing on her face, that he realised he knew the girl, and quickly got to his feet.
“Dawn!”
She was smiling, and though she looked drastically different to how he remembered her, the smile remained the same. The eyebrow she raised at him along with it was distinctly more adult, but still a wonderful thing, as he knew exactly who she’d learned it from.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
Not quite sure how to respond, he instead rushed around his desk and pulled her into a fierce bear hug. She smelled of a light touch of expensive perfume, Italian, he would have guessed, even if he hadn’t known where she’d spent the last year. After a minute he slowly released her and took a step back.
“Is that strictly legal?” she asked.
“I, erm, wasn’t aware California had imposed an age of consent for hugging,” he mumbled. “But all the same, you’re old enough to do that now, right?”
She gave him a flat look, and he shot her an expression of mock hurt and surprised indignation.
“I mean since you’re now my employer, wouldn’t that behaviour count as sexual harassment?”
“Ah no, we’re not gonna bother with any of those silly rules here,” he replied, before pausing and reprocessing exactly what she’d just said.
“I’m your employer?” he asked nervously.
She sighed impatiently and rolled her eyes, another sight he remembered all too well. She then crossed her arms across her chest and spoke.
“I got a phone call, saying that someone upstairs needed a secretary. I assume that would be you?”
Spike nodded dumbly, taking information that all seemed to make sense but still seemed a touch impossible to believe. Dawn, the Slayer’s sister, his secretary? Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Like the werewolf girl sleeping with Angel, as an example, what was going on there? In fact, Captain Forehead sleeping with anyone…
“Does Buffy know I’m here?” he asked her. “I mean, does she even know I’m alive? I didn’t want to tell her, but I, erm… never wanted to lie to you as well.”
Sympathy flashed across her face, and she took his hands in hers. It seemed a curious reversal of their traditional roles, which worried him slightly; in an office environment every day with both Illyria and Dawn, he was going to have to work very hard to maintain the alpha male status. No, that doesn’t make any sense, he thought, knowing it was true nonetheless. He took a deep breath as she spoke the words he didn’t want to hear.
“It’s ok, Spike, she doesn’t know, and you made the right choice. She’s moving on with her life. It took a while, but she’s in a good place right now.”
He was still for a couple of seconds, accepting that information, dealing with the hurt it caused but the knowledge that it was for the best. Never before had he felt so like Percy.
“And you?”
She smiled again, and offered him a piece of paper she had been holding, which a brief inspection showed to be her CV.
“I’m here on an internship,” she told him, “at the bottom of the ladder in the mythology department. Suddenly I get a call from Mr Wyndham-Price, the department head, saying a high-level secretarial position has opened up, and that I should come upstairs for an interview. So here I am.”
*
The trial was not going as he had hoped. Gunn remembered how relieved he had felt when he had been informed of the state robes to be worn by those in the Pantheon, that somehow standing up and defending someone while dressed in a ridiculous, baggy, lime green sheet worried him less than putting on that damn pinstripe suit would have done. He just wasn’t ready for that yet. He wasn’t sure if he ever would be.
The clothes marked the end of the good news, though. A legal position that had seemed unshakeable (you tried to kill them, you’re guilty) now hung in the balance, and the outcome was not looking good. That argument about humans having never done anything for another species had seemed exaggerated and childish, and Gunn knew it never would have held weight. Except, he couldn’t think of any exceptions. Nor, from the looks of it, could anyone else. And knowing that mankind was selfish and dangerous was making him feel gloomy, and having an even worse effect on his case.
The prosecutor had finished cross-examining Rose a few minutes ago and was now ranting again. Ordinarily, Gunn would have been paying attention to his every word, constantly scrutinising and looking for counter-arguments, but today he really wasn’t in the mood, and instead sat back in his chair, idly studying the Pantheon’s white marble columns, disappearing into a ceiling lost in shadows far above. He knew that he would also never let his moods affect his work, that he was far more professional than that, but it wasn’t every day you were told your entire species was useless.
He knew that it wouldn’t be long before he made his closing speech, and he wasn’t quite sure what he would say. He knew what he wanted to say, he wanted to scream it at the jury, but he didn’t think it would convince them. Should he instead try to persuade them that mankind was fighting to try to undo their mistakes, and hope he was believed? He grimaced, unconvinced he would have bought that himself.
Should he listen to his inner street kid, the one begging for the demons to bring it on, to point out that if they wanted a fight with the number one species on the planet, the ones with nukes and battleships, they were more then welcome? Again, that line was likely to be a bad idea. He didn’t have the resources to hold up the case or drag it out any longer, as the rules for the Pantheon were very similar to those of a human court, but not quite the same.
“…doing favour by keeping human numbers in check…”
Man, this guy was a jerk. Gunn hoped the man didn’t believe everything he was saying, but knew that would just be wishful thinking. The guy somehow combined the slipperiness of the least honest lawyers around with the fundamental defence of someone doing what they thought was right. Gunn remembered Angel two or three years back telling them the details of rescuing Billy the psycho from the flaming Hell-prison. Having later found out that Billy’s sentence had come from the Pantheon, Gunn now painfully hoped a similar sentence would be passed on the wolves. Yet again, he had a bad feeling things weren’t going to turn out that way. One day, he told himself, I’m gonna watch them burn.
Gunn shook his head to clear the image, then again to clear the whole line of thought. This was one of the reasons he did not want to be a lawyer, it messed with his mind, made him think on the dark side, something he would’ve liked to avoid if he could. But the most damning bit was that those thoughts didn’t come from the lawyer in him. He knew that hunger for vengeance, and he knew it had been there long before Wolfram & Hart poked around in his head. If anything, the lawyer angle had mellowed that bit out, trained it to act more civilly. So there he was, arguing with himself over whether he should hate people - no, not people, demons - for doing something he knew was wrong, and yet their arguments were so strong that he couldn’t say why.
And that was the real reason he hated the suit, the courtroom, Wolfram & Hart, and sometimes even Angel, the friendly vampire: because around them, he wasn’t sure what was wrong anymore.
*
“So how did you guys meet?”
Harmony stood in front of her desk, with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, trying to hide how irritated she was. She didn’t know what annoyed her most; that Spike had gone and hired his own personal secretary, younger than she was, or that the girl happened to be the Slayer’s little sister. It made her sick, the lengths he would go to just to try to please his precious Buffy. That was why he had done it of course, so that she could go tell her sister how Spike obviously still loved her. Like she was ever going to take him back!
And to make it worse, he had a nickname for her. In less than an hour, she had wormed her way back into his life, much closer than Harmony had ever managed, and that really stung. So she tried to hide her pout and not to glare at the girl behind the desk they’d just put up across the room from her, but she refused to offer smiles. That was why instead she was concentrating on the couple standing half way between them. God, was everyone paired up just to throw it in her face?
“We went to high school together, and then we hooked up in college.”
The girl was the one to answer all her questions so far, but the guy kept quiet, which meant he was either the handsome silent type, or just moody. She opened her mouth to respond but Spike’s latest pet beat her to it.
“Awww, you guys are so sweet. Could you tell straight away?”
Again, Dawn was totally fawning all over them, sucking up to the clients, which Harmony had been warned against many times. She just smiled grimly knowing the trouble it would cause the other girl in the long run.
“Well, I first realised I had feelings for him when...”
The guy cut across her, outrage strong in his voice.
“What do you mean? Didn't the seething hatred in the preceding years count as feelings?”
She gave him a sympathetic look, yet also with a ‘you’re pathetic’ vibe, the kind Cordy used to give that loser, Xander, and carried on.
“I mean when I discovered that we were more than just friends.”
“We were mortal enemies!” he interrupted again, appearing hurt, but Harmony couldn’t tell how serious he was being.
“Not literally,” he added, glancing quickly over at the door to Spike’s office, then Angel’s.
“Shut up dear,” she said affectionately, and he fell quiet, grumbling something about fond memories of those years.
Harmony stopped paying attention, distracted by the massive crate being wheeled out of the elevator. ‘US MILITARY ISSUE, NOT A TOY’ was stamped across the side of it, and the scruffy guy pushing it took it over to Dawn’s desk. Harmony watched intrigued as the young girl signed for it and then nervously picked up the phone. Spike burst out his office a few moments later, and Harmony noticed something entirely new about him. She’d always known he was hot, well, duh, but for the first time ever, he looked cute. He was bouncing up and down with excitement, grinning away like a ten year old opening a birthday present. Woah. How come he could have so many layers? And what could get him that excited?
*
Continued in Part 3
In spite of the automated air conditioning systems throughout the building, despite the additional filters needed for that particular department, the air in the main science lab still seemed stale to Wesley as he opened the door and led Coral inside. It wasn’t just that the labs had been quiet since they had finished studying Illyria, it was knowing that Fred was never going to smile down at him from her office window again, and he would not be sharing secrets with her on the floor while intoxicated.
How long would it take for the air in here to smell fresh again? How soon would he walk in here expecting to see the face of the woman next to him, rather than the one he could still picture perfectly looking at him from across the lab?
“And this, as you can see, is our main lab,” he advised her, waving his hand around to draw attention to certain features.
He stood back, allowing her to take a long look around. Oddly enough, he was reminded of the way Illyria had first studied the lab recently after her arrival, only Coral showed more apprehension.
“Something the matter?” he asked, catching the look on her face.
“This,” she said, placing her hand on a large piece of equipment, covered in dials, and likely worth a small fortune, before continuing, “I don’t know what it does. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called.”
He looked away for a moment, remembering seeing Fred using that very machine. He hadn’t known what it did back then either, but she had, she and her knack for figuring these things out. A smile touched his lips at the thought, one that would not diminish in the face of her being gone, because she had remained brilliant to the end. And none of them had a hope without her.
“Nor do I,” he confided, “but I’d imagine we could summon the instruction manual on one of the templates sometime, if you’d like.”
She smiled, but clearly her worries were not allayed.
“Where’s everyone else? Wouldn’t they know? Or do I have to run this enormous lab all by myself?”
Wesley frowned, and he tried to remember what had led to the absence of lab technicians.
“There were others, they all went off to…” he trailed off, then met her eyes and finished his sentence, “I have absolutely no idea where they went.”
He stepped closer, reasoning that in a lab this size, staying back near the doorway to let her explore on her own was only likely to make the experience more intimidating. They slowly walked around the lab, with him pointing out various bits he could remember the names of. They were mostly the bits so simple she’d been using them since her school years, but it was the best he could manage at short notice. A few minutes later, she stopped in front of an expensive black piece of equipment with several lenses and LCD monitors, that he had a feeling Fred had once called an Ion Microscope.
“I’m a chemist,” she told him dejectedly, “I don’t know a thing about half of this stuff.”
“You’re all we’ve got,” he said sympathetically, but resolutely announced, “so you’ll have to do.”
She remained clearly unconvinced, but focused on his exact words instead, her eyebrow raising in both curiosity and sarcastic gratitude.
“Well Jesus, you sure know the way to a woman’s heart.”
He turned away from her slightly, so she could still see his face, but he was free to fix his eyes somewhere in the middle distance, encapsulated by the memories playing before them.
“The last time I checked,” he said dreamily, “it was straight through her ribcage.”
*
Really not a bad office we’ve got here, he thought to himself as he rearranged his desk for the twenty-third time, positioning the lamp on the right, dragging the pencil pot forwards, and straightening up the various documents again. Across the room, the Blue fairy was inspecting the walls with almost scientific precision.
“This location would be best for the weapons cabinet,” she said after a long while, her voice filling the large, sparse room.
He looked up, taking in the spot she had picked at one end of the room, a fair distance from any of the windows, and easily accessible when pinned down behind her desk. He had a really good feeling about this new partnership they had formed, of all the people he had met here in LA, Illyria was the closest he had found to a kindred spirit. And between the two of them, their existing reputations ought to bring them to public attention quickly enough.
“Looks good to me,” he confirmed, and she turned and headed out of the room. She walked in that determined, focused way that he had seen her display more of as she grew used to her human body, and presumably she went to find someone who would build her the weapons chest she desired. He’d have to sort out the contents for it, he supposed; a couple of broadswords each, a selection of axes, some sai, perhaps combat knives, and a good supply of stakes. Would be nice if we could get something bigger, too. Bit of firepower never hurt anyone, after all. Well, it did, but that was mostly what it was there for.
*
“Objection, your honour,” Gunn interrupted, his pulse racing like it hadn’t done in months, only hoping that the sweat patches weren’t visible on his robe.
“The prosecution suggests that the defendants and their species exist as cattle, however cattle are bred specifically for the purpose of slaughter, I must insist that human beings are not.”
The judge, who looked remarkably human himself, nodded, and they both looked over at the lawyer for the prosecution, the most qualified of the six werewolves that were behind the whole thing. The man shot him a brief glare, and then turning to the front of the court and responding.
“I was insinuating,” he said slyly, his undisguised Russian accent adding a tone to his delivery Gunn found rather menacing, “that Human Race is pest, whose numbers must be controlled. As this is way in nature, so should it be in supernature.”
The judge motioned for the prosecutor to continue, who began a slow walk back and forth across the Pantheon floor.
“Humans breed constantly, population grows always larger. We prefer to hunt moderately to keep numbers down than large-scale cull each century.”
The prosecutor halted, regarding the jury carefully. His beard and moustache, black, but flecked with grey, did nothing to reduce the animal nature of his appearance, despite of the navy blue robe he wore.
“Your race,” he said, turning to Gunn, “has ravaged land with war and cutting down forests, destroyed seas with pollution and much fishing, and poisoned air with factory and motorcar. Is there anyone in room,” he asked, spreading his arms, “who can think of single positive thing that human race has done for any other species?”
*
A knock came at the office door, which was strange, because Spike didn’t know anyone who would knock. Puzzled, he considered who had thought it sensible to give an office glass walls, yet a solid door, the one bit he might like to look through. With luck his visitor would be the secretary he had asked for; Harmony had warned him that the Watcher had already arranged it.
“Come in,” he called, without looking up from his desk.
He heard the door open and someone step into the room, a young woman, judging from the sound of her heels. Still fretting on his list over the same line as he had been considering for the last ten minutes, he pushed the paper aside and looked up, taking the girl in at a glance. Thin build, medium height, glossy brown hair, blue eyes, cream-coloured skirt and jacket combination, similar to Harm’s but more tasteful, with a pastel blue blouse. It was only then, after focusing on her face, that he realised he knew the girl, and quickly got to his feet.
“Dawn!”
She was smiling, and though she looked drastically different to how he remembered her, the smile remained the same. The eyebrow she raised at him along with it was distinctly more adult, but still a wonderful thing, as he knew exactly who she’d learned it from.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
Not quite sure how to respond, he instead rushed around his desk and pulled her into a fierce bear hug. She smelled of a light touch of expensive perfume, Italian, he would have guessed, even if he hadn’t known where she’d spent the last year. After a minute he slowly released her and took a step back.
“Is that strictly legal?” she asked.
“I, erm, wasn’t aware California had imposed an age of consent for hugging,” he mumbled. “But all the same, you’re old enough to do that now, right?”
She gave him a flat look, and he shot her an expression of mock hurt and surprised indignation.
“I mean since you’re now my employer, wouldn’t that behaviour count as sexual harassment?”
“Ah no, we’re not gonna bother with any of those silly rules here,” he replied, before pausing and reprocessing exactly what she’d just said.
“I’m your employer?” he asked nervously.
She sighed impatiently and rolled her eyes, another sight he remembered all too well. She then crossed her arms across her chest and spoke.
“I got a phone call, saying that someone upstairs needed a secretary. I assume that would be you?”
Spike nodded dumbly, taking information that all seemed to make sense but still seemed a touch impossible to believe. Dawn, the Slayer’s sister, his secretary? Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Like the werewolf girl sleeping with Angel, as an example, what was going on there? In fact, Captain Forehead sleeping with anyone…
“Does Buffy know I’m here?” he asked her. “I mean, does she even know I’m alive? I didn’t want to tell her, but I, erm… never wanted to lie to you as well.”
Sympathy flashed across her face, and she took his hands in hers. It seemed a curious reversal of their traditional roles, which worried him slightly; in an office environment every day with both Illyria and Dawn, he was going to have to work very hard to maintain the alpha male status. No, that doesn’t make any sense, he thought, knowing it was true nonetheless. He took a deep breath as she spoke the words he didn’t want to hear.
“It’s ok, Spike, she doesn’t know, and you made the right choice. She’s moving on with her life. It took a while, but she’s in a good place right now.”
He was still for a couple of seconds, accepting that information, dealing with the hurt it caused but the knowledge that it was for the best. Never before had he felt so like Percy.
“And you?”
She smiled again, and offered him a piece of paper she had been holding, which a brief inspection showed to be her CV.
“I’m here on an internship,” she told him, “at the bottom of the ladder in the mythology department. Suddenly I get a call from Mr Wyndham-Price, the department head, saying a high-level secretarial position has opened up, and that I should come upstairs for an interview. So here I am.”
*
The trial was not going as he had hoped. Gunn remembered how relieved he had felt when he had been informed of the state robes to be worn by those in the Pantheon, that somehow standing up and defending someone while dressed in a ridiculous, baggy, lime green sheet worried him less than putting on that damn pinstripe suit would have done. He just wasn’t ready for that yet. He wasn’t sure if he ever would be.
The clothes marked the end of the good news, though. A legal position that had seemed unshakeable (you tried to kill them, you’re guilty) now hung in the balance, and the outcome was not looking good. That argument about humans having never done anything for another species had seemed exaggerated and childish, and Gunn knew it never would have held weight. Except, he couldn’t think of any exceptions. Nor, from the looks of it, could anyone else. And knowing that mankind was selfish and dangerous was making him feel gloomy, and having an even worse effect on his case.
The prosecutor had finished cross-examining Rose a few minutes ago and was now ranting again. Ordinarily, Gunn would have been paying attention to his every word, constantly scrutinising and looking for counter-arguments, but today he really wasn’t in the mood, and instead sat back in his chair, idly studying the Pantheon’s white marble columns, disappearing into a ceiling lost in shadows far above. He knew that he would also never let his moods affect his work, that he was far more professional than that, but it wasn’t every day you were told your entire species was useless.
He knew that it wouldn’t be long before he made his closing speech, and he wasn’t quite sure what he would say. He knew what he wanted to say, he wanted to scream it at the jury, but he didn’t think it would convince them. Should he instead try to persuade them that mankind was fighting to try to undo their mistakes, and hope he was believed? He grimaced, unconvinced he would have bought that himself.
Should he listen to his inner street kid, the one begging for the demons to bring it on, to point out that if they wanted a fight with the number one species on the planet, the ones with nukes and battleships, they were more then welcome? Again, that line was likely to be a bad idea. He didn’t have the resources to hold up the case or drag it out any longer, as the rules for the Pantheon were very similar to those of a human court, but not quite the same.
“…doing favour by keeping human numbers in check…”
Man, this guy was a jerk. Gunn hoped the man didn’t believe everything he was saying, but knew that would just be wishful thinking. The guy somehow combined the slipperiness of the least honest lawyers around with the fundamental defence of someone doing what they thought was right. Gunn remembered Angel two or three years back telling them the details of rescuing Billy the psycho from the flaming Hell-prison. Having later found out that Billy’s sentence had come from the Pantheon, Gunn now painfully hoped a similar sentence would be passed on the wolves. Yet again, he had a bad feeling things weren’t going to turn out that way. One day, he told himself, I’m gonna watch them burn.
Gunn shook his head to clear the image, then again to clear the whole line of thought. This was one of the reasons he did not want to be a lawyer, it messed with his mind, made him think on the dark side, something he would’ve liked to avoid if he could. But the most damning bit was that those thoughts didn’t come from the lawyer in him. He knew that hunger for vengeance, and he knew it had been there long before Wolfram & Hart poked around in his head. If anything, the lawyer angle had mellowed that bit out, trained it to act more civilly. So there he was, arguing with himself over whether he should hate people - no, not people, demons - for doing something he knew was wrong, and yet their arguments were so strong that he couldn’t say why.
And that was the real reason he hated the suit, the courtroom, Wolfram & Hart, and sometimes even Angel, the friendly vampire: because around them, he wasn’t sure what was wrong anymore.
*
“So how did you guys meet?”
Harmony stood in front of her desk, with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, trying to hide how irritated she was. She didn’t know what annoyed her most; that Spike had gone and hired his own personal secretary, younger than she was, or that the girl happened to be the Slayer’s little sister. It made her sick, the lengths he would go to just to try to please his precious Buffy. That was why he had done it of course, so that she could go tell her sister how Spike obviously still loved her. Like she was ever going to take him back!
And to make it worse, he had a nickname for her. In less than an hour, she had wormed her way back into his life, much closer than Harmony had ever managed, and that really stung. So she tried to hide her pout and not to glare at the girl behind the desk they’d just put up across the room from her, but she refused to offer smiles. That was why instead she was concentrating on the couple standing half way between them. God, was everyone paired up just to throw it in her face?
“We went to high school together, and then we hooked up in college.”
The girl was the one to answer all her questions so far, but the guy kept quiet, which meant he was either the handsome silent type, or just moody. She opened her mouth to respond but Spike’s latest pet beat her to it.
“Awww, you guys are so sweet. Could you tell straight away?”
Again, Dawn was totally fawning all over them, sucking up to the clients, which Harmony had been warned against many times. She just smiled grimly knowing the trouble it would cause the other girl in the long run.
“Well, I first realised I had feelings for him when...”
The guy cut across her, outrage strong in his voice.
“What do you mean? Didn't the seething hatred in the preceding years count as feelings?”
She gave him a sympathetic look, yet also with a ‘you’re pathetic’ vibe, the kind Cordy used to give that loser, Xander, and carried on.
“I mean when I discovered that we were more than just friends.”
“We were mortal enemies!” he interrupted again, appearing hurt, but Harmony couldn’t tell how serious he was being.
“Not literally,” he added, glancing quickly over at the door to Spike’s office, then Angel’s.
“Shut up dear,” she said affectionately, and he fell quiet, grumbling something about fond memories of those years.
Harmony stopped paying attention, distracted by the massive crate being wheeled out of the elevator. ‘US MILITARY ISSUE, NOT A TOY’ was stamped across the side of it, and the scruffy guy pushing it took it over to Dawn’s desk. Harmony watched intrigued as the young girl signed for it and then nervously picked up the phone. Spike burst out his office a few moments later, and Harmony noticed something entirely new about him. She’d always known he was hot, well, duh, but for the first time ever, he looked cute. He was bouncing up and down with excitement, grinning away like a ten year old opening a birthday present. Woah. How come he could have so many layers? And what could get him that excited?
*
Continued in Part 3