Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

Chp.28

Where the Spirit is

Info: chp.1

Angel walks over from where he was leaning against the desk. “You think I sing worse than that?” He asks with a look of disbelief on his face, which isn’t much different from his usual look, his eyes are just a little wider as he asks. “At least you could make out what I was saying.” He sighs, and then looks over at Willow. “No offense.”

“Absolutely none taken. I know that I sound like a dying dog when I sing.” She quips, smirking at the two demons standing in front of her.

Lorne turns and places a hand on the vampires shoulder, shaking him slightly. “Sorry, Angelkins. She at least stayed in tune.” As an afterthought, “well most of the time anyway. Don’t worry your crown as Champion of the Tone Deaf people is still in place.” The demon chuckles at his joke, and turns back to the witch.

Willow chuckles at the exchange between the two, and then takes a deep, and steadying breath. “What did you see?” She asks, looking into the red eyes of the green demon.

Lorne wraps an arm around the girl’s shoulders, in a friendly way, looks down at her, and takes a deep breath. “Come walk with me.” He answers, as he takes a step over to the couch in the middle of the lobby. As he sits down, he pats the cushion beside him, telling Willow to sit there. “You know for such a little thing you have some major magic mojo goin’ on there, Strawberry.” He starts to explain, not noticing that at the nickname she’d considerably stiffened, beside him.

She looks at him, uneasily. “Uh, could you not, umm, call me Strawberry? Please.” Her eyes shine with uncertainty as the demon looks down at her.

“Sorry there Witchy-poo. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” He says reading her aura, and noticing something about that word and why it makes her so twitchy when it's being used in reference to her being.

“Thanks.” She rolls her eyes, at the ridiculousness of the new name. “So did you find out how to help Buffy or why I couldn’t get through to her when I mind walked?”

“The thing is Sweetie.” He starts, wishing for a nice, refreshing Sea Breeze. “What I read, was kind of strange, and it seems completely crazy.” He’s really feeling the need for something alcoholic, even a shot of Fighting Cock would help right now, and that stuffs nasty. “She’s there, it’s that what makes her want to be here isn't." He glances nervously over to the vampire. Dreading what he's about to say. "Seems her spirits nowhere to be found." He was expecting Angel to freak, but as he watches, it's the witch's response that totally throws him off of his game.

He sees the panic rise in the witch’s face.

“She lost her soul.” She whispers, in shock. “Oh, my god!” She shouts, and frantically jumping to the conclusion. Not really understanding what the big, green guy has just told her.

“Hold on there, Sweetie.” Lorne requests, with a surprised look on his face. “I didn’t say that her soul had left. I said her spirit wasn’t there. The part of her that makes her Buffy, it’s just gone.” Turning, he places a foot underneath him, and places a hand on her arm. “There’s more though. I saw the barrier, or what you thought of as a wall. Her minds a total void, because of it, it’s a total blackout in there. I don’t think you’ll be able to help her, until she wants help, and decides to take that barrier down.”

Willow's head drops to her chest. “How? I don’t understand why she’d lock herself up again.”

At that statement Lorne’s head whips back around to glare at the girl beside him.

“This has happened before?” Angel asks, coming around from the back of the couch, to come face to face with the two on the seat.

Willow looks up into the vampires, concerned brown eyes, and reluctantly smiles at him. “Well, it wasn’t exactly like this, but when Glory took Dawn, she sorta slipped into a catatonic state. Then not to long ago she was poisoned by this demon, and went psycho, when she wasn’t in a state of delusion. The delusions were of her being in a mental institution, but I could still get into her mind, this time I didn’t even get two steps.” Her shoulders slowly slide down the back of the couch, and she drops her head into her hands as she relates the information.

He listened to the little witch sitting beside him, straightening his coat, and removing his leg from underneath him as he does so. Lorne has an idea forming in his head. Piecing everything together, as she tells the story. “What you’re saying is that the catatonia comes on when something truly traumatic happens to her, Willow Wisp?”

“Yeah, well at least the first few times that it happened, anyway.” Willow fidgets, uncomfortably as she looks from the vampire to the demon. “Why?”

Lorne looks over to Angel, seeing the realization on his face, as he starts to piece it all together. “You think, that maybe the collapse of the town she called home has something to do with this?”

Willow whole-heartedly agrees with a quick nod of her head.

“You may be onto something there, Lorne.” Angel answers, his mind wondering over the puzzle. He realizes something. “She hated that town. It was the only thing keeping her from that normal life she always wanted.” Angel protests vehemently, as an assessment of his belief of five years ago.

Taken aback at the vampires vehement belief in his words, and raising a pert, little eyebrow in askance at him. “Where the heck did you get that idea? She never hated that town. She wanted to be a normal girl, that’s true enough, but she didn’t hate Sunnydale.” She shakes her head at the ideas of soulful vampires; even Spike hadn’t been as dense as Angel.

Looking at the witch, Angel doesn’t know what to think. “When we were together. She told me she hated the place.” Is the only answer to the argument, or at least it’s the only one that made sense as a defense.

“That’s all you can come up with?” Lorne states. “And you’re the CEO of a law firm.” He shakes his head at the vampire in shame.

“Also, hello. That was five years ago. She didn’t even know what color socks she was going to wear, that alone know what her place in the world would be. She was a seventeen-year-old girl. Granted no one at that age knows where they’ll be in the next five minutes, I’m pretty sure that we definitely didn’t know where we’d be at now.” She rants, angrily. “You left, and have no idea what she went through. You weren’t there, so you have no idea what she felt or thought.” Her anger is palpable, and if they look hard enough they could more than likely see it dripping from her pores.

“She has a point there, Angel. You weren’t there.” Lorne interjects “You couldn’t possibly know what she felt, at the time of all that destruction.”

Getting up, Angel walks off, grabbing the mug from the desk where he’d left it earlier, and makes his way to the back part of the hotel.

Looking to each other, Lorne and Willow can’t help but go into hysterics at the childishness of the vampire, stomping off to more than likely brood over the harsh words they’d said to him.

Angel never could stand losing an argument. Especially one that involved Buffy. Willow thought she might tell Lorne but she figured that he already knew. He'd had been around the vampire long enough to listen to him sing, and read him so, he must know that Angel is a sore loser.

A/N: I was hoping to get this chapter, and another for The Dance up today, but I got off too late and this was the only one that could be updated. So if you're reading The Dance there should be another chapter up sometime tomorrow. Hope you guys enjoyed, leave a review and tell me what you thought of Lorne's reading.