By Shadow
Feedback – Yes, please. Shadowlander1@coastalnet.com
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“You
must be Buffy,” the young man said with a smile, pleased beyond words to
finally be meeting the noble Chosen One.
Although after listening to Willow’s description to the Slayer, he sort
of expected her to be taller.
Finally
tearing her eyes away from the sleeping form of her best friend, a part of her
was convinced she might disappear at any moment. “Yes, and you are?” She questioned cautiously wondering where
Giles was. ‘He’s not a vamp,’ she noted, her inner Slayer sense not giving off
any of the usual signals for a vamp, although she was picking up a faint blue
aura around him.
“I
am Yoshiro, I believe you know my." he was cut off by a low moan from the
sofa. “She does this often,” Yoshiro added with a tired sigh, reaching down to
Willow’s shoulder. “Willow, wake up, we
got company.” He said in a soft voice give her shoulder a gentle shake, silently
hoping that this wasn't going to be the day she accidentally unleashed a fire
ball when startled out of a sound sleep.
He was pretty sure that that would not endear them very well to Mister
Giles.
“Go
way, don’t want to talk.” came the muffled reply as Willow pulled the blanket
over her head and snuggled deeper into the couch. This had been the first time in months she had been able to fall
asleep on something other then a hard floor and she meant to enjoy it as long
as she could.
Exchanging
an amused look with Buffy and Amy, he leaned over the back of the sofa and in a
loud voice ribbeted right where Willow's head was. The response was immediate as the blanket was thrown back and a
small compact figure rolled off the sofa and into the floor. “You bastard,”
Willow growled ready to pounce on him.
“Ah,
Willow.” Yoshiro said with a laugh pointing to her left.
Turning
in the indicated direction, Willow immediately froze before she turned her face
to the side and lowered it a bit. ‘This was a bad idea, I shouldn’t be here.’
She said to herself closing her eyes briefly, adding a few curses toward
Yoshiro and his somewhat warped sense of humour.
Buffy
forced herself to remain calm as she slowly reached out to gently raise and
turn Willow’s face back toward her.
"Ah, Wills?" She
breathed, a tightness forming in her chest at what greeted her. Instead of seeing the familiar green eyes
she had been so desperate to see moments ago, she found herself staring into a
pair of missed matched eyes. One its
rightful colour, clear and focused, the other a sickly milky white. Firmly pushing down her outrage at whomever,
whatever did this to her best friend she focused herself solely on Willow.
‘Make sure Wills is fine then go and track down whatever is responsible for
this and kill it slow and painfully.’ She decided her own eyes hardening with
resolve.
‘Great,
just great. Now Buffy is going to go off on a killing spree.’ Willow said to
herself knowing the look in the Slayer's eyes well. ‘Four years and she still
hasn't learned to control her temper.’
“I’m fine Buffy.” Willow said
with a gentle smile, trying to reassure the other woman.
“Fine? Fine!” Buffy repeated in disbelief. “You are
as far from fine as you can get and not be dead.” The Slayer replied, trying to
regain her composer giving the other two an imploring look that said ‘help me
out here.’
“Don’t
look at me, she never listens to anything I say.” Yoshiro said holding his hands
up in surrender.
“You
hush, I’m mad at you.” Willow ordered with a growl only to have him stick his
tongue out in reply not at all bothered by the threat clear in her voice. “I’d
say ‘bite me’, but you’d do it just to see what Buffy would do.” She noted
dryly with a smug look forming on her face. ‘This should be interesting;
Yoshiro and Xander in the same town.’
“What
exactly is it about you and biting?” Yoshiro asked arching an eyebrow in
question. “And don’t think you're getting out of having to calm down your
friend." He added with a smug grin
of his own. “She’s about to spit
nails.” He noted dryly, successfully returning Willow’s attention to the blonde
Slayer who had a growing look of irritation on her face.
Buffy
didn’t know who this Yoshiro guy was and why he seemed so friendly with ‘her’
best friend, but she was going to find out.
Telling herself the entire time that she was not jealous, she just
wanted answers nothing more.
Giles, who had
chosen that moment to come downstairs, broke the somewhat awkward silence that
had settled itself over the living room. “Oh B-buffy you’re here”, the former
Watcher stammered. Pushing aside the
somewhat irrational urge he had, to run back upstairs and hide under his bed at
the look the young blonde was giving him, he calmly walked into the room.
“Yeah, I’m
here”, Buffy replied after a moment her eyes narrowing as she stared accusingly
at her Watcher. “Imagine my surprise, when I walk in and find my best
friend...WHO HAS BEEN MISSING FOR FOUR YEARS... asleep on the couch.” She all
but growled at him.
“Buffy quit
growling at Giles,” Willow said placing a restraining hand on the blonde to
keep her from doing something she would only regret later, “we got here pretty
late last night.”
“Late? He
could have called me, told me you were back,” she stressed, giving him a dirty
look before turning her attention back to the redhead standing beside her. “I
wouldn’t have been mad. Far from it, in
fact,” she finished in a small voice as she found herself in the receiving end
of Willow’s resolve face. Even after
four years, the infamous resolve face had not lost its effect, even if one eye
no longer focused properly.
With a tired
sigh, “Buffy I knocked on his door a little after four this morning. It took me nearly forty minutes to convince
him that I was not a demon, a vengeful spirit or a vampire, before he would let
me through the front door,” Willow explained with a lopsided grin, “and another
fifteen before he let Yoshiro in,” she added smugly.
“How was I
supposed to know the porch light was going to make my eyes do that?” Yoshiro
questioned in mock offense. “Like I go around scaring people on purpose,” he
grumbled.
“Well he could
have still called,” Buffy replied, knowing that she was whining and not really
caring. ‘Is it such a bad thing that I wanted to know the exact moment my best
friend had gotten back into town?’
“When you and
Amy had left here just about an hour before?” Willow questioned, giving the
stubborn Slayer a poke in the shoulder, silently daring her to continue being
difficult.
“We wouldn’t
have minded being called,” Buffy insisted, a light entering her eyes for the
first time in four years, “would we Amers? We would have gotten back here in
record time. And just how do you know
what time Amy and I got back to the dorm anyway?” the Slayer questioned smugly,
thoroughly enjoying herself now. ‘God I missed this’, she thought fondly,
knowing that she was being silly, if not down right goofy, and couldn’t care
less. ‘Willow’s home! Willow’s home!’ her inner Slayer voice was crowing in
theback of her mind, even as she firmly pushed down the urge to take the
redhead into a bear hug and not let go for the next month or so, just long
enough to assure herself that Willow wasn't going to disappear on her, then she
would see about having homing devices sewn into all of her clothes so she could
easily keep track of the small hacker no matter where she went. ‘Wonder if
Angel can get
me a good deal
on them?’
“So...how do you
like university?” Yoshiro asked Amy after a moment turning his attention to the
young witch and away from the Slayer, who was still trying to convince the
redhead that she would have preferred being pulled out of an exhausted sleep to
trudge back to Giles’ flat, all because Willow had come home.
“Oh it’s
coming along nicely”, Amy replied with a small smile, finding herself liking
the young man standing beside Giles.
Although she too wanted some answers to a lot of questions surrounding
Willow's sudden return, she was willing to wait a bit before she tied the
redhead to a chair and drug out the interrogation equipment.
Any further
conversation was interrupted by Giles’ front door flying open, two figures
nearly falling over one another, just to be the first inside each searching for
someone in particular.
Xander
scrambled to his feet first, giving the figure that had become tangled up with
him at the door a slight push to steady himself. Looking around the room rapidly he settled his gaze on Willow standing
on the other side of the couch. “Wills!” he cried a wide grin plastered across
his face as he jumps over the couch and swept his childhood friend in a
bone-crushing hug, unmindful of the dumbfounded stares being directed at him.
“Does he
realize that he’s not dressed?” Yoshiro
asked, unsure if he should remove the dark-haired man, clad only in a pair of
beige Snoopy boxer shorts and socks, from the room or not.
“That is
dressed for him”, a new voice said from behind him as Cordelia Chase leisurely
entered the flat, closing the door behind her, a smug little smirk planted
firmly on her face.
“Xander! Xander...oxygen becoming REALLY an issue
here”, Willow growled as Xander continued to merrily swing her around.
“He’s on
medication, right?”
“Yoshi!”
“All right
hang on”, Yoshiro replied with a laugh, raising a hand and pointing toward the
embracing couple...with rather interesting results. One moment Xander was doing a very bad rendition of a waltz, the
next he found himself floating above the floor, a grinning Willow staring up at
him.
“Hey! What the..?” Xander cried out, trying to
shake off the force that was holding him.
“Interesting
friend you have there, Wills” Buffy commented dryly.
“Ain’t he
though?” Willow replied with a big grin, “you can put him down now Yoshiro.”
Glancing behind Giles and Yoshiro, Willow’s smile got even wider as she spotted
Angel and Cordelia lurking in the background. ‘How did Angel get here?’ she
wondered, before seeing the little puffs of smoke rising from the vampire, even
as he patted himself down with mild annoyance. “Hi Angel.”
“Hi Willow,”
the vampire said, a rare smile on his face, “if I give you a hug will your
friend take offense?”
“He shouldn’t,
but if he does you can always bite him.”
“And she mentions
biting again? Exactly what is it with
her and biting?” Yoshiro asked.
Angel gave
himself one last pat, careful made his way over to Willow, and Buffy, only
mildly startled when a sudden flash signaled that Cordelia had indeed retrieved
her little pocket-camera from its latest hiding place. ‘I knew she was much to
pleased with herself after we got back to the office’, he said to himself,
wondering just when the office was going to be plastered with Cordelia’s latest
round of candid images.
‘I am going to
kill that little fashion demon for getting her interested in taking pictures.’
Okay so Carlo wasn’t technically a demon, but still that was just plain mean of
him to get her hooked on photography, although Cordelia did have a natural flare
for it. And her photos did help in
identifying the more “photogenic” members of the demon world, not that Angel
was ever going to admit that to her, or she would have video equipment next
making tapes of him and Wesley in the office.
He just knew she would do it too, especially after he heard her on the
phone with Amy discussing a spell that would make vampires show up on film -
well transparently but they would still be there. He had nightmares for a week of Cordelia sneaking up on him while
he was sleeping, in the shower, or eating and taking a picture.
Pushing aside
thoughts of his secretary and the mischief, he just knew, she was going to get
into with her little camera; Angel turned his attention to Willow. And suddenly found himself having to consciously
keep his game face from slipping on at the site that greeted him. Tentatively
brushing the side of her face, trying to make some sense of the face before
him, his rational side was calling for calm and clear thinking. While his demon half was yelling for blood
and dismembered body parts - this was his childe.... well she would have been
if he hadn’t of gotten re-cursed with a permanent soul. But he had already made a claim on her, she
was going to be his one way or another, and after getting re-cursed it had to
be the other way. Which really didn’t
matter all that much to Angelus, even he had to admit he had been one screwy
bastard on his last rampage without his soul, and the soul wasn’t so gung-ho to
keep him locked up all the time now so that was a good thing too. Although the demon wasn’t ever going to
admit that he felt anything but contempt for his “soul” he would never live it
down. Spike and Cordelia would both
make sure of that.
With a
defeated sigh Willow gave the vampire a small little grim recognizing the look
of murderous rage that was lurking in the dark vampire’s eyes. It wasn’t all that hard to miss; she had
seen the same look in Buffy’s eyes when she had seen the damage to her left eye
moments ago. “Its okay”, Willow said, getting the same look of disbelief from
Angel she had received from the Slayer. ‘What have they been doing? Practicing synchronized facial expressions?’
she questioned herself. With another
sigh “Really, its not as bad as it looks.”
“She’s right,
it isn’t as bad as it looks. She’s just
blind in that eye and the nerves are pretty much shot so she’s not feeling any
pain aside from the phantom ones every now and then.” Yoshiro cut in dryly,
knowing that his traveling companion wouldn’t tell her friends and family
everything she had gone through to get home, wanting to spare them the agony of
knowing the whole story and the guilt - no matter how misplaced - over not
being able to save her.
“You are not
helping!” Willow growled at him, wondering if in fact Yoshiro and Cordelia had
not been separated at birth after all. Sometimes his honesty drove her crazy
especially when she was trying to keep her insanely overprotective friends from
doing really evil things they may not ever regret.
“Who?” Angel
growled his demon surging forward at Yoshiro’s words. He just wanted a name
that is all he needed - just a name to put to the being he was going to merrily
torture, kill, and even let Cordelia videotape so he could always relive the
moment.
“It doesn't
matter”, Willow replied closing her eyes momentarily to collect herself. ‘This
was a really bad idea.’ At another growl from Angel followed closely by one
from Buffy and possibly Xander, “It doesn’t matter,” she stressed again, “Yoshi
ate him.”
“Hey! I did
not eat him.... I merely swallowed,” Yoshiro defended with a look of outrage.
“I did not chew.” Noting the somewhat
puzzled look he was getting from Amy and Cordelia, "I was a lot bigger at
the time, in my true form.”
“True
form? Are you a demon?” Amy asked
recalling Willow’s earlier comment about it taking several minutes to get Giles
to let him in too.
“Me? A demon? Oh no, I’m a dragon,” he replied.
“But a good dragon, I don’t go around kidnapping princesses or trying to burn
down kingdoms. I’m a luck dragon; I help people,” he assured them, hating the
fear and loathing that always came into a human’s eyes once they found out what
he was. Only to be amazed by the
acceptance in their eyes, apparently in Sunnydale a luck dragon in the shape of
a human was no big deal. ‘This place may not be so bad after all.’
“You didn’t
chew? Well couldn’t you make an
exception and chewed just a little bit?” Xander questioned once again opening
his mouth before his brain had time to properly register what had been said.
“Chew? On a fungus demon?” Yoshiro replied a look
of disgust on his face. “It was bad enough I swallowed him, but to chew on him
too...that is just ewwww!” he finished with a shudder; sometimes humans could
really be gross when they wanted to be. ‘How else did Barney and the
Teletubbies get invented if not from the mind of a sick twisted individual?’ he
wondered briefly.
“Real nice
friend you got there Wills”, Buffy said again finding, that she liked Yoshiro;
anyone willing to swallow a fungus demon to protect a friend was okay in her
books. Besides she had fought a fungus
demon once, one that kind of looked like the TA in her psych class, and knew
how gross they really were. Next to a
chaos demon they were just simply ugly to look at and very messy to slay. ‘At
least Quin was a big help in getting me a new leather jacket', she thought
silently, remembering the daring young man who acted as “bait” to lure the
fungus-demon out into the open so she and Spike could kill it. Although the “Committee” he claimed to be a
part of did concern her a bit especially that one
Committee
member in charge of public safety, now she seemed like a really strange person.
“So the demon
that did this to you is dead?” Angel said slowly, trying to regain control of
himself a bit. On one hand he was
pleased that the creature responsible for Willow losing her sight in one eye
was dead. On the other hand he was outraged that he wasn’t the one that got to
kill the fungus-demon and feed the little pieces to Oz one night during the
full moon. After all they had
discovered that while in his “wolf –form” Oz could eat just about anything and
not get sick. It had become a somewhat
morbid pass time of Spike’s to feed the werewolf all kind of strange things
when it was his turn to wolf-sit. Come
to think of it, they got the best and most useful information when Spike was
wolf-sitting, amazing how the threat of being fed to a werewolf just opened all
sorts of people. Sometimes they had to
make the threat again to get them to shut up.
“Yeah... very
dead”, Willow replied with a small grin, and then something occurred to
her. “Why did you risk coming out
during the day, wouldn’t it have been better to wait for sunset?”
“We left LA a
little before dawn after we got back to the office and got Giles’ message on
our answering machine.... didn’t want to wait until sundown to come”, Angel
said, returning to his human face and giving her a lopsided grin of his own.
“Giles called
you last night?” Buffy questioned in anger, giving her Watcher another dirty
look, “Angel lives in LA and he gets a phone call, but we live in the same city
and we don’t rate one... I see how it is.”
“Buffy give it
a rest”, Willow said gently, placing a hand on her friend’s arm. “You know I’m
here now that is all that matters.”
“Yeah,
well.... I still would have liked to have been told sooner,” Buffy continued to
grumble, determined to stay angry at Giles for at least the rest of the
morning.
Yoshiro
stepped back to watch Willow’s friends get situated in the living room to hear
her recount the last four years. His
shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter at the brief shoving match between
Xander and the
vampire over who got to sit next to Willow, only to have the spot taken by a
smug looking Cordelia, who wasted no time in making herself right at home
beside the redhead. On the other side sat a grim faced Buffy who continued to
shot hostile looks at her watcher, before he had disappeared into the kitchen
to make some tea.
Finally the
two males had settled down onto the other furniture in the room, Xander with
the blanket Willow had used the night before draped over his lower half, after
Angel had looked at him with a cocked eyebrow and commented, “nice boxers”. Which had been closely followed by another
camera flash at the look on Xander’s face when he realized that he had ran
across town in nothing but his boxers and a pair of mismatched socks.
Shifting
uncomfortable at the silence that had settled over the room, Willow fought the
urge to run out of the flat and not stop until she reached Ohio. She hated being the center of attention and
talking in
front of
people, several of whom were not known for always keeping a level head about
them when told something they really didn’t like to hear. Then something occurred to her, “you and
Cordelia were in LA?" she asked trying to picture the vampire and
cheerleader together in Los Angeles for any length of time.
“Oh yes, Angel
runs a detective agency and I’m his office manager,” Cordelia replied happily.
“Detective
agency? Office manager?” Willow said
the words carefully testing them out. ‘No they still sound strange even spoken
out loud’, she concluded after a moment.
“Angel
Investigations,” Cordelia began before being cut off by Yoshiro who so far had
stood quietly against a wall content to observe the whole reunion.
“You guys
wouldn't have an Irish guy named Liam working for you, would you?”
“Liam?"
Angel questioned, his interest peeking up at the name that was the name he used
while investigating one of the sightings of the mysterious redhead two years
ago.
“Yeah, some
guy named Liam was asking about Willow in a pub in Sydney, said he was with an
LA detective agency”, Yoshiro explained.
"Ah, that
was me... Liam is my real name, I was using it keep Rodelus
from knowing I
was following him.", Angel said after a moment,
completely
thrown off balance when Willow started laughing only to be
joined a
moment later by Yoshiro.
Exchanging
confused looks with the others in the room, Angel could only watch as the two
had laughing fits at his expense. After
a few moments, “Oh goddess, this is too rich,” Willow said trying to compose
herself. “To thank this all could have been over with if we had waited.”
“Huh?” Buffy
questioned, trying to understand what was so funny, “Wills you’re not making
any sense.”
After a few
more moments, Willow raised her tear-streaked face, her eyes puffing and
watering from laughing too hard. We were there that night in the pub, ducked
out the back when the owner said some Irish vampire named Liam was asking about
us. If I had only stayed long enough to
see your face”, she continued before dissolving into laughter once more. The irony
of it all was just too much, and after a moment Angel joined into the laughter.