In her cell, Faith paced. The dreams wouldn’t leave her alone no matter how she tried to distract herself. Her cellmate, Cindy, a bigger girl with bottle-red hair and a sagging mouth from one too many pulls at the bottle, watched her with irritation, her jaw setting as Faith passed her for the hundredth time.
“If you don’t sit down I’m gonna smash your face,” the redhead drawled lazily.
“Yeah, yeah,” Faith murmured, giving the room one more lap before flopping onto her bunk.
“What’s buggin’ you anyway? You’re not due to get sprung and you haven’t pulled kitchen-duty in months. Drivin’ me frickin’ nuts.”
Faith stared across her block into the cell directly on the other side. Sandra was reading Better Homes and Gardens again. How that woman had ended up in jail, for murdering her husband, no less, was almost a shame. They didn’t come sweeter than Sandy. In Faith’s mind, that made her that much more creepy.
“Hey, you hear me?” Cindy demanded from the top bunk. “I’m talkin’ to you.”
“I gotta make a phone call,” was Faith’s answer.
Cindy laughed. “Good luck with that. No way Hammer’s gonna let you get a privilege.” J.T. Hammish, Hammer to most everyone, was the regular guard for their block and the man in charge of privileges, such as use of the phone, and was Faith’s biggest enemy inside. “Besides, who you got to call? Ain’t like you got any friends, honey.”
“Quit with the drawl. You may have been born in Alabama but you lived in New York all your life,” Faith complained, rolling onto her back.
Cindy was right. Hammer would never allow Faith a phone call. His favorites, girls like Jackie and Pam, were the ones who got phone calls whenever they liked, who were given extra dessert, who earned more free time outside in the yard, and who could be found with an extra pack of cigarettes. Of course, all that came at a price, and Hammer made sure that, nightly, one of them paid him. Faith had been offered the same luxuries, and her refusal had earned her Hammer’s hatred. She’d bloodied his nose and bruised some ribs before Hammer managed to call a guard and convince the other man that despite the oddness of the situation—Hammer being in Faith’s cell, alone, without reason—she had indeed attacked him.
Faith was given a night of solitary confinement and six months of laundry duty, her outside privileges were revoked and her phone rights completely eliminated for the past year. Faith had considered it worth it up until now. The time in the laundry was time spent away from the other girls, and though she missed fresh air, it helped her avoid the inevitable fights that took place in the yard. Even the night in solitary, something she’d thought to be a myth until that evening, hadn’t been so bad. She’d been in darker places before, that was for certain.
But now, damn it, she needed that phone call. And the only way that it might be possible was if she could convince slow-eyed Quinton, the relief guard who was as nice as pie, but a stickler for the rules, to let her make an after-hours call.
Cindy watched as Faith jumped to her feet again and crossed to the opposite wall, immediately beginning to do standing push-ups. Her arms worked like pistons as a sheen of sweat formed on the Slayer’s brow and her breath quickened.
“You gonna push that wall down there, Faith.”
“Then we’ll be free,” was Faith’s angry reply.
Now just to wait until second shift.
*~*~*
He wasn’t sure what woke him, exactly, perhaps it was vampire intuition, perhaps it was the headache about to split open his skull, but Spike was awake and displeased about it, a dangerous combination.
The first thing he noted when in between pulses from his headache was that it was still daylight. The second thing he noticed was that he wasn’t alone.
“Are you Spike?” the woman asked daintily, stepping from the shadows to reveal a pleasantly sweet face.
He struggled to focus, the booze much more a problem than his awkward angle, and sat up. “Who’s asking?”
“I need to find Spike…I have some important information for him.”
Lord…that face…was she here selling Bibles?
“Why don’t you tell me what you want with him, first, luv, and I’ll see he gets the message,” he groaned, clutching at his pounding head.
The woman blinked and wrung her hands. “Oh…oh, okay. Of course. I represent someone he might be interested in speaking to. That’s really all I can say.”
He glanced up at her through his fingers. “That’s all you can say? Shame. I’m afraid Spike won’t do business without more information.”
“Really, sir…I should only be discussing this with him. My employer asked that I not reveal myself to anyone else,” she informed him timidly.
He rose to his feet and she took a nervous step back. Spike grinned. “Now, now…afraid, are we?”
She didn’t answer him but Spike heard the quickening of her heartbeat.
“Not very polite, now is that?” he asked, leaning toward her a bit, delighted when she let out a small squeal and took another step back. “You know who I am…why bother with the games?”
“My employer--”
“And that’s another thing…we want to know why your employer would send little bitty you, nubbin.”
Confusion entered her eyes. “’We?’ Who are you--”
“God!” he cried suddenly. “Do you have any aspirins on you, bit? My head’s just killing me.”
“I—uh, no, I don’t.”
“Damn it. Go out drinking for one night, just to try and stop ‘em from all talking at once and they turn on me. Having a bloody party up here!” he shouted, thumping his skull. He advanced on her until she was backed against the wall and placed both hands flat against the wall on either side of her head. “Now, then. Let’s have us a share, yes?”
“My employer needs to see you. It’s urgent. You’ll like it, I promise,” she stammered.
“Promises now…I’ve never been one for promises…whether I’m owing them or I’m the owed. Your word means nothing. Try again.” He grinned when she gulped.
“I can’t tell you more because I don’t know it. I was just instructed to find you and bring you to them.” He delighted when she looked about to faint.
“That so?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “And if I refuse?”
“Then…” she mumbled something and he leaned in to hear her better.
“Then?” he whispered lazily in her ear.
“Max is supposed to make you,” she growled and shoved Spike backwards. Unprepared he went stumbling.
He hit something that wasn’t the wall and whipped around unsteadily to find a behemoth of a man in his path. “Max?” he asked as the sledgehammer came down on his skull.
*~*~*
Cordelia Chase, or so that’s the name they insisted on calling her, was going to go completely insane if the jolly green giant sang another song. Just one more. Her glares of annoyance were proving completely ineffectual, leaving her with the impression that he might be used to this behavior from her. And that he was purposely doing it to piss her off.
Why was she still here? Just because the kid, Connor, had promised to stay with her really wasn’t offering much comfort any more. And there was just something weird about the guy they called Angel, the one who seemed to be in charge. Something weird besides his hair.
Fred…whatever kind of name ‘Fred’ was, chattered nonstop and no one seemed to mind. They actually appeared to think it was adorable, Charles Gunn in particular. And the demon was still singing.
With a huff Cordelia rose to her feet and stomped across the lobby to the office area, having spied a coffeepot earlier. She noted the grieved expression on Angel’s face when she began to brew and was given a pleasant jolt of happiness at the act.
“It says here it’s common with dimensional travel to have side-effects such as memory loss, deficiency of motor skills, speech problems, and sometimes even…ew,” Fred wrinkled her nose, “loss of bowels.”
The heads of Angel, Fred and Gunn swiveled to face Cordelia. “You people are disgusting,” she declared and fingered the gauzy material of her dress. “I’m wearing this ridiculous white monstrosity and if you’ll notice, it’s unsoiled. No need to line the floor with newspaper just yet.”
Angel almost smiled. It was Cordelia in true form, even if she didn’t know it.
“So…if it’s memory loss from being returned to Earth…how soon before it comes back?” Gunn asked.
Lorne ended his song and stepped in. “That’s the thing, chicken wing, you don’t know. I’ve seen it a hundred times. More often than not it’s a permanent thing.” He faced Cordy. “If you aren’t liking your name, tushy, now’s the time to reinvent yourself.”
“I don’t accept that,” Angel snapped. “They sent her back here just to make her forget everything about her life?”
“More than likely, not. Chances are the gurus didn’t want her to remember how things run up there so they wiped her memory free of that. Looks like they took a bit more than intended,” Lorne corrected.
“Hold up, wait a minute. Are you people insane?! You really believe all this stuff, don’t you?” Cordelia cried incredulously. “You really think you’re a vampire,” she pointed to Angel. Her eyes snapped to Lorne. “And you…you really think you’re some sort of mind-reading demon.”
“Not mind-reading exactly--”
“And you,” she ignored Lorne and whirled to face Fred, “think you were trapped in some other dimension where they enslaved you and called you a cow. Oh, and let’s not forget that I was a queen there.”
She whipped around and turned on Connor. “But my favorite is how you’re the son of two, count ‘em, two evil bloodsucking vampires and at the end of school last term you decided that the best way to spend your summer vacation was to bury your daddy twenty thousand leagues under the sea.”
The group stared at her as she stood in the middle of the room, panting, eyes wild.
“Yeah…so, can we do a spell or something to get her back to normal?” Gunn asked. The entire group, Connor included, murmured their agreement.
Cordelia threw her hands up in frustration and flounced to a chair in the corner of the room to pout.
*~*~*
“Quinton. Hey…Quinton. QUINTON!” Faith shouted down the block from her cell, causing the naïve guard to jump and splatter coffee on his starched blue shirt.
“Shaddup!”
“Keep it down!”
“Trying to sleep here!”
Faith ignored the protests of her fellow inmates and waved frantically at Quinton, who was trotting down the block to her cell.
“What’s up, Faith?” he asked cheerily.
She smiled saucily at him and sauntered up to the bars, pleased to see the hairs on the back of his neck prickle at the attention. “Quinton…I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
He gulped and eyed her warily. “What kind of favor?”
Cindy snorted from her bunk. Ignoring her, Faith smiled again. “Nothing too bad. But I need to use the phone for just a minute. It’s important.”
Quinton’s shoulders fell. “Faith, you know Hammish says no phone for you until December. Sorry.”
“Quinton, wait…” she purred, grabbing his sleeve then releasing it quickly and smoothing it with her long fingers. “I won’t be but a minute…really. And I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. But I think a friend of mine’s in trouble and I want to warn someone.”
“In danger?” he asked, eyes narrowing a bit. “How would you know?”
“Just call it women’s intuition…come on Quint…I won’t be any trouble. Do I ever give you trouble?” she asked sweetly.
He shook his head. “No…no you don’t, Faith.”
“Then there’s no harm in cuffing me and taking me to the booth, is there? Five minutes there and back. Scouts honor,” she swore, holding up two fingers.
“Wrong hand,” he informed her.
She dropped her hand, shoulders sagging. “Whatever,” she sighed, “come on…please? No one needs to know.”
“Every girl on the block’s awake now, thanks to you. They’ll know. And it won’t just be you who gets it from Hammish if I let you go down there. He’ll demote me, or worse. Sorry, Faith, I just can’t.”
The guard hesitated a moment longer, then walked off.
“Quint…Quinton…wait!” she called, ignoring the laughter of the girls on her block.
“Quint…Quiiiiinton!” one of them teased back.
“I want to do good! Save someone!” another called.
Faith sagged against the bars of her cell before returning to her bunk and flopping down onto it, face-first. Suddenly she flipped over. “Hey…Cindy…you get phone calls tomorrow…right?”
“Forget it,” came her cellmate’s stern reply.
Faith glared at the bulge in the bunk above her before turning onto her side, completely unsure what her next move should be.
*~*~*
Buffy rounded the corner outside the Sunnydale High gymnasium, sure she’d see that vampire come barreling around the same corner, but was met with a brick wall instead.
“Damn,” she muttered under her breath, then jumped as a mangy alley-cat came from nowhere, chasing a much quicker mouse across her shoe.
Sighing she headed back in the direction from which she’d come, determined to find the vamp and get away from the high school. She had no intention of running into Spike tonight. Besides, she was right--in his current state of mind he probably wouldn’t be any help to her at all.
Movement to her right caught her eye and Buffy quickly ducked behind some packing crates left outside the cafeteria. The smell of rotting vegetables--I knew serving the kids turnips was a bad idea, but no one wants my opinion on the menu-- almost made her gag, but fortunately what she saw distracted her from the putrid stench.
“Spike?” she whispered as a man, larger than life, carried what appeared an unconscious Spike, to a huge van parked outside. A woman held the door open for him and Buffy watched as they proceeded to tie and gag their victim. Hefting him up to secure his arms, the light caught just so and the identity of the victim was certain.
“You know…not that I’m against seeing Spike in this condition…at least he’s not blabbering on and on…but I have to ask, and believe me…I so wish I didn’t have to care about this. What are you two doing with him?” she asked after quietly making her way to the van.
The woman jumped and spun around. “None of your business. Better for you to leave, little girl, or Max will have to find more rope.”
“I’m not really into bondage,” Buffy retorted simply. “And I’m not too worried about Max’s chances with me. Big lammer-jammer that he is,” she eyed the gigantor.
The woman smirked. “Our business with William the Bloody isn’t your concern. Not yet, anyway.”
Buffy cocked her head to one side. “Meaning?”
“This conversation is over,” Max growled, reaching for the Slayer. Wordlessly Buffy grabbed his arm twisted, snapping the bone.
The woman watched, wide-eyed, as Max fell to one knee, screaming in pain, before narrowing her eyes and reaching into her coat to reveal a nice-sized pistol. Buffy took a few steps back, hands up.
“No need to bring that into it,” the Slayer informed her, eyes never leaving the weapon.
“Oh, I think there might be. I rather enjoy having all my limbs intact. Now, Max, get in the van. Go!” the woman ordered. “And you. Take off. Now. Forget what you’ve seen here and just go. It doesn’t concern you…and trust me, it’s truly better that way.”
The van’s engine roared to life and the woman slammed the cargo doors shut, grabbing on to the back ladder and hefting herself up, the gun still aimed at Buffy. “Nice doing business with you,” she grinned as the van took off.
Buffy waited a beat before running after the moving vehicle when shots whizzed past her. Ducking she slipped on a wet section of pavement and went down, her head hitting the curb. The last thing she saw were the taillights of the van as it turned a corner and took off.
*~*~*
“The spell’s pretty easy,” Lorne informed his friends as he set up ingredients on the office counter. “A little Mrs. Dash, a little incantation and presto-chango…memories galore for bitchy woman over there.”
Cordelia, across the room, ignored him. “You’re not doing a spell on me,” she shouted to the others. They, in turn, ignored her and continued with the preparations.
“And this will restore her memory completely?” Angel asked warily, fingering a bag of herbs.
Lorne nodded. “Should do it. I can’t guarantee we’ll get her memories of the last three mystical months, but she’ll remember everything before that.”
Angel exchanged a glance with Fred and Gunn, both looking nervous. “We don’t have another choice.”
“You do,” Connor bit out from his seat a few yards away. “You could leave her alone.”
“To do what? Sit here for who knows how long, not knowing who we are? Who she is?” his father snapped. “We need her back, now. It’s the right thing to do. Cordy would agree with us…if she could.”
“I think we’re all done here,” Lorne interrupted. “Just need you-know-who.”
Four heads swiveled to Cordelia.
“Oh…God! Why am I so freaked out about this?” she asked herself, rising to her feet and crossing the room. “It’s not like any of this is real…It’s not going to work.”
“Sit here,” Lorne ordered, shoving her not so politely into a chair. “And be quiet.”
Cordelia glared at him, but complied.
“Fred, mix the herbs there with that liquidy stuff in the decanter,” he next instructed.
Fred did so and grinned when the mixture turned from a bright blue to a soft pink. “Cool.”
“Chemistry,” Cordelia corrected, then shut her mouth when Lorne sighed.
Memory’s fade and time moves on
Sun down at night, sunrise at dawn
Wax of the moon, ebb of the tide
Three months of memory this one’s denied
While Lorne recited the spell Angel shifted nervously and watched as Cordelia’s eyes grew wider. The pink liquid was beginning to churn and bubble. When Lorne finished speaking, smoke began to rise from the liquid until a fine light-pink trail of smoke was circling around Cordelia.
“Hey…hey!” she screamed, unable to move. “What’s going on?”
Suddenly the mist turned a bright gold and shimmered around Cordelia’s seated frame. It began whirling faster and faster and Angel and Gunn moved in front of Cordelia. “Make it stop!” Gunn ordered Lorne.
Before Lorne could speak the light shot out, knocking Cordelia, Gunn and Angel to the floor, unconscious.
Lorne licked his lips. “Oh…crap.”
“Charles! Charles!” Fred gasped, hurrying to his side and kneeling next him, cradling his head in her lap. “Charles?” She slapped lightly at his face as Connor knelt and did the same with Cordelia.
Gunn’s eyes fluttered a moment before opening completely. He blinked for a second. “Stop smacking me,” he mumbled slowly, looking around.
Fred grinned. “Are you okay?”
“Sure…what’s going on?” he asked, shoving her hands aside and sitting up. Fred sat back on her knees, a little flustered by his stern reaction.
“The spell sorta blew up and it zonked you guys,” she explained.
“You guys…oh man…Cordelia?” he asked, noticing the other bodies on the ground.
Cordelia was just starting to come around and she blinked lazily as she sat up. “Uh…Gunn?”
“She remembers!” Fred cried happily, clapping her hands.
“What the hell did you do to your hair?” Gunn asked, fingering a strand of her short blond locks.
Cordelia grabbed a fistful of her hair as she struggled to her feet. “What…what the…what is this?!”
Angel groaned and it caught her attention for a brief second. Gunn rolled his eyes as she whined about her hair and offered Angel his hand. “Angel…you better have a good explanation for his, man.”
Fred wrapped an arm around Gunn’s waist and he shrugged out of her hold. “What is wrong with you?”
She blinked, taking a stunned step backwards. “I--”
“Angel!” Cordelia cried, marching to him. “What the hell happened to my hair? Is this some kind of joke?!”
Angel stared at her. “Cordelia, I…gimme a minute.” Lorne helped him to a seat. “Thanks,” Angel said, then did a double take. “I’m sorry…have we met?”
“Uh…Angelcakes…this isn’t funny,” Lorne chastised.
Angel glanced at Cordelia. “Did you set it up for me to meet new clients today?”
She shrugged. “What am I, your whipping girl? Where’s Wesley? And why are there no people in this hotel?”
“Lorne!” Fred shouted suddenly, halting everyone in their actions. “What did you do?”
Lorne stammered. “I—it’s a—ooh boy.”
“You did this?” Gunn asked, stomping up to Lorne and thrusting a finger in his face. “Demon-boy did something to us? I think we know how to take care of this problem…oh, but then I forget who I’m surrounded by. A vampire and his girl Friday.”
“I am not his--”
“Be. Quiet!” Fred shrieked. “Something is wrong here. We did a simple spell to get Cordelia’s memory back and now you three are all acting freaky! So everyone just be quiet, sit down and try to be helpful!”
The room quieted and everyone took a seat collectively. Eventually, Angel raised his hand. “You did a spell? Why? And…who are you again?”
Fred sighed. “I’m Fred. You rescued me, remember?”
Angel thought. “No…I don’t. Rescued you from where, exactly?”
“From Pylea, Lorne’s home dimension. You rescued Cordelia there, too, last year. Remember?”
Angel and Cordelia exchanged a glance that clearly indicated, no, they didn’t.
“Let me try, love,” Lorne requested, moving in. “Angel, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Cordelia, Wesley and I were reading a prophecy about me,” he replied after a moment.
“That’s nothing new…except the Wesley part,” Fred muttered.
“Why?” Cordelia asked. “What’s up with Wesley?”
“Another time,” Lorne interrupted. “Cordy…what about you? Last memory.”
She thought about it a moment while regarding the demon with wary eyes. “Same thing. Shanshirt.”
“Shanshu,” Angel corrected.
“Whatever.”
Lorne turned to Gunn. “And you?”
Gunn glared at the Host and turned his head, refusing to answer.
“Charles, please…” Fred implored.
“Can I just ask what’s up with you callin’ me Charles? Only my grandmama does that, and that’s only when it’s gonna be a really bad night at her house.”
Fred took a step backward. “We…I’ve always called you that,” she replied with sinking heart.
“Last memory,” Lorne repeated.
“Taking out a pack of demons on the South side of Barnett St.”
“Last memory that involves any of these people,” Lorne tried again.
Gunn cracked his knuckles, dragging out his answer. “Waiting outside Cordelia’s hospital room while Angel went bad-ass on whoever was sending her the private screening of the world’s problems.”
Fred put a hand on Lorne’s arm. “What does this mean?”
He turned to her. “I studied them. It’s a little…badder than we probably think. But not totally so.”
“Why?”
“Well…it seems that rather than replacing Cordelia’s memories of the past three months…it erased their memories for the past three…years.”
She stared at him.
“Give or take.”
