Lindsey had reached the seduction scene. At least one of the many sweet seduction scenes. It was so clear to the lawyer that Angel had been as obsessed with his William as Angelus had been. Angel's ramblings had finally settled down into a much less chaotic order. Mostly it was a fairly coherent auto biography, and he now thought that he may possibly know Angel better than the demon did himself. He knew that Wolfram and Hart had so badly miscalculated their approach when they had thought Darla was the key to controlling Angelus. If they had had Angel's so called 'Sweet William' in their grasp they would have had the vampire's undivided attention, let alone the demon almost immediately in the palm of their hand. Or, on the other hand, ir was just as likely that they would, by now, all be crowding in to that one small waiting room. And judging by the passion Angel's William generated in the big ensouled vampire, he'd go for the second option. In fact he'd bet his life on it, if he still had one. A thought that made him laugh.
Part of Lindsey really wanted to meet Angel's William and see if he was as beautiful as Angel described him. Oh, he knew Angel's history, he knew just who Angel's 'Sweet William' was, where he was and all. But like the rest of creation he had mistakenly assumed that Angel hated Spike. Hated the vampire he had created for a previously unknown reason. None of them had suspected that the real reason for their twisted emotional response to each other was nothing more than a simple jealous rage, a really twisted love. He'd seen the drawing of Spike, read the reports on Spike, scant as they were. Alas he was now beyond ever meeting Spike. Just as his former colleagues were beyond the benefits of his current wisdom.
He could wish all he wanted for the LA office to have his new insights to William the Bloody and his relationship to his sire. A sire he now had positive confirmation wasn't Drucilla. Information he had no way of sharing, even if he really wanted to.
Yet, why would he wish his rivals had this information anyway? His reasoning brought him round to the potential overcrowding of his little room and alleviating his soul crushing loneliness. All he had were his memories, and Angel's memories and a small, but growing, second hand crush he was developing on William the Bloody ... William the Bloody not there either! He laughed, again, this time at his own silly pun. But the truth remained, he so longed for someone to talk too. But, knowing how his employers worked he had to try his utmost to curb that longing, because that was what they were using to break him. He knew it. Just as he knew they were no doubt preparing him a new, or at the very least, a repaired body, all the better to get him to sign away his eternity. Just as he had seen so many staff members do before him. After all one of his former primary tasks had been to find out just what were to hot buttons to push on his own staff members. Just like someone had done for him.
Lindsey put his light down by his side and let that last thought circle in his mind for a moment. It was a new departure from his self imposed routine. The former lawyer wondered why his habit had seemingly changed so suddenly? Maybe he had read too long this time? He had been reading for quite a while; not that he had any way to gauge the hours or days or weeks in there. Other than by the days and weeks worth of description Angel had left him. It was not a reliable calendar. But he had found in it a rhythm that suited him. Read a while, think a while, rest a while, dream of Angel's William a little, and then start the cycle over again. Perhaps this was his soul telling him to break his own cycle.
He laughed, a short, bitter bark of sound with no audience to share the joke. As if being dead wasn't a big enough change to his routine. As if loneliness wasn't soul destroying. Wasn't as crippling as a physical injury.
No one had disturbed him, no one had even been there to speak to him. Other than Darla's one oh so brief visit that was. So no one had ever seen his little light. As far as the home office was concerned he was sitting in the dark, contemplating his navel by touch alone. And he rather liked it that way. Granted he would really like someone to talk too, but no one connected to Wolfram and Hart. He would much rather spend all his eternity with less hellatious creatures. Atilla the Hun, Hitler or even Jack the Ripper... at least they were human monsters. Weren't they? Or had they been earlier employees of older incarnations of Wolfram and Hart. After all hadn't they been an entirely different company before their somewhat hasty move to the then tiny town that was Los Angeles in 1881.
If he recalled his history rightly, it snowed for the first time ever recorded in LA shortly after Wolfram and Hart had opened for business. Pity no one in Los Angeles could read the omens. Or, if they did, perhaps they mentioned it to entirley the wrong person, and no doubt paid dearly, and painfully for it. Maybe he'd meet them down here, if he was ever let out of his own personal waiting room. One he shared with all the ghosts of Angel's past.
At that latest sign of his growing confusion and doubt he lifted his light and prepared to read a little more. Anything to turn away from the demons he knew so well. They filled all his imaginings. He'd even cast Mother Theresa as a demon, once. A sudden moment of clarity showed him what Wolfram and Hart were up to. They were going to drive him to the brink of insanity for want of another voice and then trust in his desperation to make him listen to any and all bullshit they choose to feed him. And no doubt make him sign away all his eternities.
"Oh no, I will not play this game! Do you hear me, damn it? Are you listening to me? Watching me?" He spoke aloud for the first time since Darla left him his little Hadean light. And that gave him an irrational hope, that there was something or someone, somewhere, willing to listen to him. "Lord Hades, I beg you, all I want is someone to talk with. Please!" His voice slipped and trembled a little on that last word. And in that moment he knew his former employers were winning. His sanity was slipping even faster than before. Folding himself into as tight a ball as he could he started to cry. Desperate for any break in his enshrouding silence he didn't fight for control. "Just one... that's all, just one."
If he hadn't been dead he would have died when a hand gently touched his shoulder, right before a voice whispered just as gently in his ear.
"Hello, child, I wonder, would you happen to know just what it was that drew us to you?" The voice was masculine, cultured, gentle, soothing, so very English in its every cadence. And so right on cue that Lindsey began to believe in something, in someone again. In the ancient Greek God of the Dead. Hades had seemingly answered his prayer, unlike some other deities he could think about. Yet, shock held him momentarily silent. Not quite daring to believe he wasn't finally, and irrevocably insane!
"What ails you child?" A second as cultured, as masculine voice asked. "I heard you call out our dear Hades' name. Why would you pray to our kinsman in this of all places?" That voice was gentle too. As if his feelings mattered to them. Oh, but his loneliness was shaping his eternity into odd patterns. Why English voices? Polite English voices filled with care and sympathy.
"Your kinsman?" Lindsey unfolded himself, looking to see what shape his dementia had taken. In doing so he revealed the little light in all its shining glory, remembering too late that he shouldn't be showing that light to the residents of Hell.
"One of Hades' lights!" The first voice whispered, awe-struck.
"Little wonder we were drawn here on feeling our bodies awaken." The second speaker's voice trembled as it spoke. A gentle hand reached out, not for the light but to softly touch Lindsey's shoulder. An act of comfort, a singularity in and of itself in the bowls of Hell.
"Who are you? Why are you here?" Lindsey reached out and touched both speakers. Touching their demonic faces making sure his delusion was complete. "Are you here?" Lindsey wanted to believe the truth his eyes showed him, but all his years of experience told him that this was, most probably, just another of Wolfram and Hart's torments.
"We have many names, but only one you might remember. Our very last names in the mortal world." The first speaker smiled and gently cupped Lindsey's face in his huge, animalistic claw. "Do you not feel a connection... Lindsey?"
"You know me?" Lindsey couldn't help it, he smiled. Welcoming this imagined familiarity.
"Yes, of course I know you. Like I know all our personnel." He smiled again, this time the smile moved into a short, cheerful laugh. "I am Mister Connors, by colleague here is Mister Becker." The demon reacted to Lindsey's reaction to their names. "Ah, I see you recognise our names."
"You were the senior partners before the relocation of 1881. I've read the history of the firm. A young vampiric lawyer, what was his name? He's supposed to have killed you in a fit of hunger or something." Lindsey sat a little straighter in the presence of his most senior employers.
"Such mortal nonsense. Our dear William didn't kill us, he hid us. It was Wolfram and Hart that sought our demise; our dear William that facilitated our escape. It was in deed our dear friends Messers Wolfram and Hart that tried, so inaffectually, to kill us." Mister Connors laugh, softly. His eyes glittered with some hidden emotion, the most mortal one Lindsey could come up with was glee. Their attempted murder seemed to be a source of delight to these demons, and Lindsey could not see why? Yet, their delight was infectious, he found himself smiling back at the so ameniable demons beside him.
"If they were your friends, why would they try to kill you?" Lindsey drew in a sharp breath as soon as he finished speaking. "Sorry, dumb question."
"On the contrary, my dear boy, you have simply been alone too long. Come stand, let us see your room here. " Mister Becker held out a hand to ease Lindsey onto his feet between the two demons. Somehow, standing between them like that, lent a sense of security to the former lawyer, one that he had been missing since he had awoken there.
Once upright the dead lawyer looked at them, niether being was much bigger than say Angel. His current yardstick to everything. After all, Angel had been his only companion for so long now, it was only fitting he be his messuring rod too. At the very least Angel's brooding ramblings had been.
"To answer your question, dumb or otherwise, Messers Wolfram and Hart are from another dimension entirely. Do you understand such concepts child?" It was Mister Connors that spoke. Lindsey thought of all the episodes of Hercules or Xena or Star Trek he'd ever seen with just such a plot. Then he thought about his employers and laughed. If those television writers had even half the knowledge he had of such places they'd never write again. No one would ever believe them. "Ah, I see that you do. Good! We, on the other hand, are native to this dimension. We belong here. We are of the few surviving first generation demons on this planet. And that made us a direct threat to our dear friends."
"Surviving? But you're dead! Dead and in Hell right here with me." Lindsey was sure of so little since his own death, other than those few scraps Angel's writings had confirmed. But he was damn certain they were all dead. All of them dead and damned.
"No, quite the contrary. Our dear William was slipping, his sanity hadn't been the same since his mother died. We tried our very best to help him, but he needed to do his own things. We knew he would come back, that our William would abandon his demonic persona and choose to be with us again. So when we abandoned our corporeal bodies to hide out here we gave him the trigger phrase." Mister Becker smiled as he paused in his narrative.
"What trigger phrase? I'm confused!" Lindsey buried his head in his hands hoping his next delusion was going to make at least a little more sense than his current one did. Maybe, if he kept his eyes covered for long enough they'd make a tv movie of it all and feed him the tale in bite sized chunks. With plenty breaks for ads and coffee? What he didn't expect was the very next words spoken in his little corner of Hell.
"If it please the court, my client egs leave to ask for clemency... or words to that effect, and in that predestined place." Mister Connors started to laugh softly at the shocked look on Lindsey's suddenly upturned face. "What? Our William was a lawyer, is a lawyer, and no doubt always will be a lawyer. Granted it is highly unusual for a vampire to enter a plea in a mortal court, that was why the words and place of their utterance was so critical. Our William needs us for something. That much is obvious, to us at least. Perhaps the time has come to finally deal with our dear friends Messrs Wolfram and Hart. Permanently!"
"I do so hope that it is thus, brother. I must admit I grow so very weary of this hiding place. They have such a lack of imagination that it depresses me. Our dear cousin Hades was never this... predictable." Mister Becker looked from Mister Connor to Lindsey and back. "If our dear friend here has the key of light, why don't we go home? William wouldn't have summonsed us if there was no way home." The desperation could be seen in the demon's face. His need to go home was as great as Lindsey's, only Lindsey wanted to finish reading his story first. He couldn't help casting a glance at the as yet unread portions of Angel's tale.
Couldn't his vision wait till he had finished reading Angel's auto-biography first?
"What is this?" Mister Connors asked, looking at the scratched words on the wall. Lindsey would never doubt this being as a demon ever again as the vision before him mutated and grew, distorted and twisted beyond recognition. "Angelus!" It snarled!
"Angelus has come to hell and we missed him? Where is he?" Becker began to mutate too. It was clear to Lindsey that neither being liked Angelus for whatever reason they had yet to tell him. He warmed even more to these ancient beings.
"He's alive. He came here while alive, or as alive as the undead get at any rate. He was sent back, no doubt too close to living for the demons in this place. It was Angelus that killed me!" Lindsey turned from demon to demon, almost pleading for their belief.
"How could that be?" Connors asked. "How could such a vile demon be given such charity? And sent here as yet undead, that's a cruelty worthy of Angelus himself! I would have said there was no being as so cruel as he that would do such a thing."
"See, I kinda scanned along a bit a while back. He was sent here, physically, by his then lover, and with his soul back in place..." Lindsey ran his little light along the carved words. Looking for the relevant passage. "See, here it is!"
"Hmm." Was all that Mister Connors would say on the subject.
"Bring your light to the start, child. I want to take Angelus' words with us. We can read them later and decide which words we believe. Those of the so called ensouled demon known as Angel, or those of our dear William." It was Mister Becker that made that so polite request. Yet, Lindsey recognised a request that was a demand when he heard one. Oddly enough, usually from a demon!
"Your William is his William isn't it? Your William is Spike, William the Bloody?" Lindsey finally gathered his wits and began making the synthesists connections he had been hired by Wolfram and Hart to make for them. His greatest talent, making something out of apparent nothingness.
"In deed he is. You are a clever man, Mister MacDonald." He noted the younger soul's reaction to the mention of his surname. "I told you, we know all those who work for our dear friends. And that includes you. Our dear William did become the vampire known as Spike. Why do you ask? You disapprove of vampires?"
"No, not really, it's just that I think maybe something's happened to William, to Spike. Something powerful and strong enough to succeed where we were failing. We, they, Wolfram and Hart rather, were trying to drive Angel insane, trying to make Angelus come to the fore. To break him and leave him only able to function under our control. Only I think something happened that we didn't, couldn't allow for. Then he came and killed me. His sire, Darla, was hiding in my place, and I thought he wanted her for himself, but she too died, right after me. She brought me this little light and admitted she didn't know anymore than I as to why Angelus did as he did." Lindsey paced the wall, trailing the light for his visiting demons to scan the words.
As they read them the words faded and vanished from the wall. Lindsey kept walking and talking, trying not to think about the vanishing tale of woe.
"See, Angel got his soul forced back on him for the first time back in 1898. He was filled with such guilt for his actions as a vampire. His greatest regret is in this section. Well, greatest that I've read so far. He fell in love. Angelus, not Angel. He fell in love with an innocent young man and got all possessive and jealous, and finally he killed him. The man he had fallen in love with was a mortal and in a jealous rage he killed him, and turned him, and abandoned him. There's a lot of references to his hearing that Spike did this and Spike did that. All with this sense of pride, or possibly love. And loosing Spike is the only thing that I now think would destroy both Angel and Angelus. We picked the wrong damn target!" And in his utter despair at having died for the wrong cause, he laughed. He laughed rather than cry before these, his most senior of senior partners. "I died for entirely the wrong fucking cause!" And he laughed some more.
Unlike those demons left behind, these two elder beings just held the younger soul as it laughed itself out.
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