I don’t remember much of what life was like before the car crash. I remember playing outside and climbing trees and I remember my mother reading to me at night. I remember how it felt to eat jell-o and having it slide down your throat without chewing. I remember bits and pieces of a life, but nothing real or particularly meaningful.
The lives that I remember now are more complete, but they are not my own. These people lived and died, and somewhere between here and eternity they got stuck in me. Those that deserved heaven never got there and those that deserved hell made a stop along the way. There are so many factions, I can feel them splinter. Some want out, whatever the cost, some are scared at where they’ll be sent if they leave me and those that most deserve peace are those the least willing to hurt others to get it.
There’s a child and a mother and the brother of a king. There’s a monster and a singer and a hundred more that haven’t surfaced long enough for me to tell what they are. I wish I could know them better, but that way lies madness, I think. I have to defeat them all to defeat the worst of them and I have to make the best of them suffer to survive. They’ve lost their bodies long ago and I have first dibs on mine.
I’d say it with more conviction if I thought it would make any difference.
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The sun was high in the sky by the time Angel made his way up from the sewers. Cordelia and Fred had arrived just after Hannah’s collapse and had been sitting with her while Lorne tracked down some contacts who dealt with mystical comas. Wesley and Gunn had been looking through books and Internet sites on the subject, but so far had met with little success.
Wes looked up and saw Angel enter the lobby. He called across the office to Gunn and the two of them went to meet him by the weapons cabinet. Angel fished around in the bottom drawer for a clean towel to wipe off the green bile that coated his sword and then set the sword in its place in the cabinet.
“What’s up?” he asked, guessing from Wes’ long face that it was nothing good.
“It’s Hannah,” Wesley said briefly. “If you’ll let me get the others, I’ll tell you what’s happened.”
As Wesley made his way towards the stairs, Lorne came in from the garden entrance and walked up the steps with him. He reported that he had found nothing useful. Wesley suggested that he sit with Hannah while Cordy and Fred came downstairs to hear what had happened and Lorne gratefully agreed.
Once the members of Angel Investigations had gathered in the lobby, Wes began to talk.
“As you know, Hannah has been using a drug with mystical properties to help control the souls within her,” he began. He leaned back against the counter and put his arms on it, looking out at Fred and Gunn, who sat on the round sofa, and Cordy and Angel who perched on the stairs. “We knew that there was the potential for problems with the mystical aspects of the drug and Fred has been working hard to come up with something better.”
Fred smiled weakly. Wesley knew she blamed herself for what was happening. He had spent a good portion of the morning trying to convince her that it wasn’t her fault, but she still worried.
“Not only is the drug addictive, it seems to be making the other souls inside of Hannah stronger,” Wes said.
“I should have seen that coming,” Fred said in a small voice. “The whole principle of the drug is that it gives Hannah’s soul enough strength to overcome the others. It only makes sense that they got stronger too.”
“We were working quickly and we haven’t really stopped working on it since Hannah arrived” Wesley said gently. He turned to Angel. “The souls are now strong enough to fight Hannah for her body. One of them attacked me this morning. Lorne sensed it, but it retreated as soon as he touched her. It seems that physical contact is the best way of reminding Hannah who she is.”
“How long is that going to last?” Cordelia asked.
“We’ve taken Hannah off the drug, which means the other souls will begin asserting themselves again,” Wesley said. “As far as I can tell, she will remain comatose until one of the souls gains supremacy over the others.”
“What’re we going to do about that?” Gunn asked.
“The souls inside of Hannah have no bodies of their own,” Wesley reported. “There is no place we can send them except…out.”
“You mean to heaven?” Fred asked.
“Or to hell,” Angel said. “And those are the ones that are going to fight the hardest for her body.”
“Essentially, yes,” Wesley agreed. “We have to find a way to exorcise all the souls except her own from her body.”
“So how do we find this exorcism spell?” Cordelia asked. “Because the last time we tried that it didn’t go so well.”
“This will be much more complicated than that one was,” Wesley said solemnly. “And I like to think that I’ve become a stronger person since then. We all have, actually. I think any one of us could pull it off.”
“Right,” said Gunn. “But where do we look? You and I found nothing and Lorne came up empty too.”
“I’ve heard rumours that there’s a shaman who just moved in north of the city,” Angel said slowly. “If they’re true, he might be able to help us.”
“That’s not a lot,” Cordy pointed out.
“No,” admitted Wesley. “But it’s the best we have so far.”
He looked around the room at his friends and co-workers.
“All right, Angel, you take Gunn and Cordy and drive up north. By the time you get there, it will only be a little while until sunset and then you can visit the shaman. Fred, I would like you to stay here. You can continue your work in the lab. I’ll stick with the books and see if I can’t find something after all. Lorne, I imagine, won’t leave Hannah’s side, but we can spell him if he needs it.”
Wesley’s orders were met with nods from around the room. Angel and Gunn both removed favourite weapons from the cabinet, just in case, and followed Cordelia down to the sewer so that Angel could get out. Fred hesitated before entering her lab; Wes could almost see the guilt radiating off of her, but eventually she too went to work. Wesley made a brief trip up the stairs to tell Lorne what was being done and then retreated to his office and the piles of books on his desk.
On the counter top sat a pot of coffee, long gone cold, and two mugs, one with cream going sour in the bottom.
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Cordelia returned to the car and slammed the door shut with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. She slumped down in her seat and pouted, which would have made Gunn laugh if the circumstances hadn’t been so dire.
“What happened?” Angel asked. He had spent the last few hours in the well-shaded back seat of the car, under a blanket, waiting for the sun to set. “Is the shaman there?”
“Oh, he’s there all right,” Cordelia snarked. “All mystical and full of promises. But he only talks to people with ‘true purpose’. As if having my head split open by the Powers four or five times a week isn’t purposey enough!”
“We drove all this way for nothing?”
“No, silly. He’ll only talk to you.”
“Oh,” said Angel. He sounded like he was fighting back a smile.
“Yes, Mr. I Have A Prophecy is good enough for the shaman. Everyone else has to stay in the car.”
“We’ll all have to stay in the car for a while,” Gunn pointed out. “Until it gets dark enough that Purpose Boy here doesn’t go up in flames as soon as he gets out.”
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Wesley knocked lightly on the door to Hannah’s room and then entered. Lorne looked haggard; there was an ill-looking pinkish tinge to his cheeks, and he nodded hello to Wesley without turning his attention from Hannah. He held her hand, absently stroking the back of it, and Wesley knew that he wasn’t just looking at her, he was looking into her.
“Any change?” Wes asked quietly.
“For the worse,” Lorne said, his voice was deeply sad. “She’s sinking further in. It’s harder to see her. Nothing is coming up to replace her, it’s just…empty. I can hear them in the background and they aren’t getting much louder, but she’s fading.”
“We should hear from Angel and the others soon,” Wesley said, putting a hand on the demon’s shoulder. “They’ll find something, I know it.”
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” Lorne said, looking back to Hannah’s face. He kissed her hand.
“Always,” said Wesley.
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Angel opened the heavy oak door. Either the shaman wasn’t human or whatever he’d said to Cordelia constituted an invitation, because Angel crossed the threshold without a problem. The air inside was thick with incense and candles lit a path down one of the hallways. Angel started to wipe his feet and then noticed a sign that requested he take off his shoes, so he complied.
He padded down the hall, following the candles, until he came to another heavy door. He knocked and it swung open. The room it revealed had a thick red carpet and the walls were paneled wood. There were paintings of saints’ trials and beatifications on the walls and a fire burned in the hearth.
“Come in, Angel,” said a deep voice. A figure rose from an overstuffed chair that faced the fire.
The shaman turned to face the door as Angel stepped into the room. He was tall and broad across the shoulders. His hood was pulled up over his head and cast shadows upon his face, but as far as Angel could sense he was human enough. He indicated a circle on the floor in the corner of the room and Angel walked towards it. They knelt across from one another and the shaman began to speak.
“You have come about the souls.” The shaman reached down for a bag of bones and cast them into the circle. He studied them for a moment and seemed to like what he saw. “I can sense them. They grew silent for a time, but now they have returned and they clamour for freedom.”
“We tried to help her,” Angel said. “It didn’t work out the way we’d planned.”
“Your friend was right to try,” the shaman said. “There is nothing earthy medicine can do for her, Angel.”
“What else can we do, then?” Angel asked. “We have to do something or her soul will be lost.”
“Souls are lost all the time. Why is this one any different?”
“Because she’s fought to stay found,” Angel answered after thinking for a moment. “Because she hasn’t known peace in years and she deserves to.”
“Very well,” said the shaman. “I will tell you the ritual that you need to perform. But be warned: the girl Hannah can only be saved if she chooses to save herself. In the end, your help may not be enough.”
“We’ll still try,” Angel said sincerely.
“Then this is what you must do.”
As the shaman outlined the ritual, Angel’s heart sank. It was complicated and long and, for all he knew, dangerous. But they would try it. He thanked the shaman and retrieved his shoes before heading back to the car.
Cordelia had moved to back seat, so Angel slid into the front when he returned. He put on his seatbelt slowly as Gunn started the car and drove out of the drive way.
“Did you get it?” Cordy asked.
“I did” Angel said heavily. “Pass me your cell. I need Fred to go out and pick up a few things. That way, we’ll be all set when we get back.”
“We in that much of a rush?” Gunn asked. Some of the stores they used for ingredients weren’t places any of them liked to go alone.
“Yeah. I really think we are.”
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