Diclaimer in Part One-a.

*****

FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY, 2018 - LOS ANGELES, CA

*****

Angel stood stone still on the roof of the Hyperion, allowing himself the luxury of watching the sun set. Buffy was near. He could feel her, not her exact location, but a definite sense of her presence. He'd wondered if he would still know when she was near after becoming human, but it appeared that some things never changed.

He wondered where she was and knew that with his connections as a private detective that it would take only minimal digging to find out, but he didn't. He couldn't allow himself to think about her, to wonder if she was alright or not. It was still too painful.

He couldn't bear the thought of visiting Buffy and seeing her there with Riley's son. He knew it was selfish and petty, but he just wasn't that strong.

*****

Jake took a deep breath as he stood on the step of the school administrative building. The incestuous air of Huxley had always driven him nuts. He was intensely private, a loner, but in a town like Huxley, no one had any secrets. You couldn't blend in. There was no crowd to get lost in. Surveying the teeming crowds spread over the large campus that compromised his new high school, he didn't think that would be a problem anymore.

Had Jakob been a bit more objective, he would have found the undeniable truth that he would never be able to blend in anywhere. He was a startlingly handsome young man with dark hair and intense deep brown eyes. He was tall, almost as tall as Riley, standing just over six feet three inches. He was young, but he didn't display the awkward nature often common in boys of his height. He was an infinitely graceful creature, a gift his father assured him was directly inherited from his mother. He still had a very boyish look, but it held the promise of the man he would grow into. His quiet, lone wolf demeanor only heightened his appeal.

It had been these very traits which had set tongues to wagging back in Huxley, but as he stood there in a new city, a new state, Jake promised himself that his mother would never again feel shame on his account.

*****

Buffy spent the first few weeks after the move wondering if she had lost her mind. She was in Los Angeles again, after more than two decades. What had she been thinking trying to start her life over at thirty-seven? She admitted to herself that it wasn't her life she was trying to start over, it was Jakob's. She had hoped that the change of location would help him start fresh, but when he came home at the end of his first day of school, things were exactly as they had always been.

She smiled wryly as she surveyed the pile of homework that he probably wouldn't even start working on until twenty minutes before it was due. Her son was nothing if not a creature of habit. She just hoped they had left some of his less desirable propensities in Huxley.

He still wore the sweat drenched clothes from his first day of basketball practice. She watched as he leafed through the mail for one of the many sports magazines to which he subscribed. Finding one, he read it as he rummaged through the refrigerator for a can of soda and a sandwich.

"Supper will be ready in twenty minutes," she said, watching him stuff half the sandwich in to his mouth.

"I know," he said around a mouthful. "Don't worry. I'll still be hungry. Growing boy."

He placed a quick peck on the top of her head as he walked down the hallway of their tiny apartment to his bedroom. She said a silent prayer to any deity that would listen that Jakob would find some peace in their new life, possibly even put some ghosts to rest.

*****

Jake stared at the stack of books in his cramped locker. The coursework at his new school was challenging, far more so than in Huxley. He didn't mind, he was actually excited about it. He knew he would still excel academically, but at least now he wouldn't be the only one in his class to do so. Not that people tended to make fun of him for being a bookworm, he was too physically imposing to be a target for jest.

"You gonna dig your head out of there sometime today, Finn?"

"Hey, Charlie," Jake said in greeting to the only friend he'd made at school. Swinging his backpack over his shoulder, Jake ran to catch up with the younger boy. School had just ended and if they didn't hurry, they were both going to be late for practice.

After being paired together on Jake's first day of practice for defensive drills, he and Charlie quickly became friends. The lanky freshman was an amazingly talented athlete who could have easily gotten a scholarship like Jake's to play for the school, but it was apparently unnecessary. Charlie's family was loaded. His mother was a successful Hollywood actress - one Buffy had never particularly cared for - and his father was a businessman. Charlie and his two other siblings had never wanted for anything.

The Finns had always been comfortable, a solid middle class family. Riley had never hedged about paying exorbitant prices for Jake's basketball shoes or for a new video game he wanted. They had certainly never gone hungry, but Jake couldn't really imagine the lifestyle Charlie had grown up in. He was well aware that if it weren't for the scholarship, his mother could never afford to send him to this elite school.

Most of Jake's peers were hyper aware of their social status, taking every opportunity to remind him he was not one of them. Charlie didn't do that. He was born into the upper echelons of society, but he had somehow managed to remain unaffected. He treated Jake as an equal.

*****

"Jakob, do you have a calculator?" Buffy called.

She was sitting at the kitchen table paying bills and leafing through the want ads while Jake and Charlie played some obnoxious video game in the living room, working their way through a whole box of Twinkies as well.

"Backpack," came his terse reply. She doubted it took that much brain power to play some stupid video game, but both boys seemed unable to speak and play at the same time.

Charlie wasn't what she'd expected her wild child to bring home. He wasn't like the hoodlums that Jakob had been friends with in Huxley. Charlie was an outgoing, charismatic little flirt, but there was an innocent and playful nature to him that all of Jake's previous cohorts had lacked. He was definitely likeable and very bright, but there was a hint of inner restlessness and adventure that no doubt had been what first attracted Jake to him. She knew her son was in need of a proverbial partner in crime.

At least she hoped it was proverbial, the last thing she needed was Jake getting into more trouble, especially in L.A., where the Finn name would mean nothing to the cops. Then again, Charlie looked mischievous but not necessarily felonious.

Buffy had been surprised at the fact that Charlie was only a freshman. Jake had always associated with a much older crowd. Maybe Charlie could teach Jake to lighten up a little. She smiled as the two boys yelled loudly in the next room, apparently celebrating their victory. A loud knock at the door startled her.

"That's my dad," Charlie announced, throwing down his controller and grabbing his backpack.

Buffy headed for the door. Charlie had been over to the apartment several times, but this was her first opportunity to meet either of his parents. She opened the door, looking forward to possibly making some new friends for herself.

"Hey," a handsome black man said, "I'm Charles Gunn, is my brat around?"

Buffy smiled at his friendly demeanor and nodded, stepping out of the way to allow him to enter the apartment. Out of habit, she did not verbally invite him in, but he entered nonetheless.

"Yes he is. I'm Buffy Finn, it's nice to meet you Charles," she said, firmly shaking his hand.

"None of that," he said with a smile just like Charlie's. "Call me Gunn, he's Charles."

As the two boys made their way towards the front door, Buffy said to Gunn, "I don't believe you've met my son, Jakob."

Gunn stared at the boy for a long moment, cocking his head to the side as if he were trying to decide something. "Uh ... no," he said distractedly, "We've never met. Hello, Jakob."

After shaking the boy's hand, Gunn turned to Buffy and continued, "Me and the wife are throwing Charlie a sort of birthday party in a few weeks, hope you'll both be able to come."

Buffy smiled nervously, she wasn't sure about the look Gunn had thrown Jakob. "Um, I'm not sure right now, I'll see how things work out. Please give my regards to your wife ..."

"Cordelia," Gunn supplied nervously, "my wife's name is Cordelia Chase, or was, that's her stage name now."

Buffy swallowed visibly. She knew without a doubt why Gunn had looked at Jakob so strangely. She also had a pretty good idea of why Charlie had been so friendly towards Jake in the first place. Cordy and Angel were still close friends and she'd heard through Willow that Cordy's husband and Angel were business partners. Fabulous, just spectacular.

Gunn could almost hear her thoughts, and gave her a reassuring smile that Buffy hoped meant he would keep his silence.

"L.A. can be an awfully small place at times," he said quietly.

Buffy nodded as Charlie moved past the pair into the hallway. In a second, Gunn grabbed him by the back of the neck, stopping him.

"What do you say?" he chastised.

Sheepishly Charlie turned around to Buffy. "Thank you for dinner, ma'am," he said, ashamed of his rudeness.

"Kids," Gunn said under his breath, releasing his son.

"Don't worry," Buffy assured him and then looked pointedly at Jakob, "I understand how difficult it can be."

Gunn smiled sadly, "I'm sure you do."

*****

"So?" Charlie prompted his father once they were in the car headed home.

"Yeah," Gunn said, biting his lower lip. "I'll admit I thought you were feeding me a line, but you weren't."

"Do you know Jake's mom?"

"No," Gunn answered. "Your mother talks about her sometimes and Angel has a few pictures of her around the office."

"If Jake - ," Charlie started.

"No," Gunn said sternly. "This isn't our business. It is not our place to go sticking our noses where they don't belong."

"But if he's Angel's son ... "

"No, Charlie. You already told me that the man Jakob considers his father just died, right?"

Charlie frowned deeply. "Yes."

"And now you want him to find out that the guy he thought was his dad for the last seventeen years isn't?"

"Well ... "

"It's not our place. If Buffy wants to tell her son, that's her business. I don't want you mentioning anything about Angel to him, you hear?"

Charlie grunted noncommittally. Jakob hadn't really said anything about his "father", but Charlie got the definite impression that things hadn't been good between the two. His uncle Angel was like the coolest guy in the world and if he really was Jake's dad then surely they both had a right to know.

"Promise me," Gunn said to his son, "you will not say anything to him about Angel, understood? And don't say anything to Angel about it either." He added as an afterthought.

Reluctantly, Charlie said, "Okay."

"Good," Gunn said, then sighed deeply. "Now, how the hell am I going to get your mother to keep her trap shut?"

*****

Buffy began to relax after several weeks passed without Jakob skipping classes or getting into any other kind of trouble. She was glad she'd decided to take the chance on moving so far away, maybe Jakob had just needed a clean start.

When the time for Charlie's party arrived, Buffy begged off, but told Jakob to go and have a good time. She'd seen Gunn several times in the intervening weeks and was fairly certain that he wasn't going to meddle in her or Jakob's lives. She was not, however, prepared to face Cordelia. She also didn't trust Cordelia not to invite Angel along.

Jake had mentioned, however, that Charlie's parents had been fighting a lot. She guessed it was probably due to the fact that Cordelia wanted to jump in the thick of things and Gunn didn't approve. Buffy just hoped Gunn would win.

*****

"How was the party?" Buffy asked, truly curious when her son returned.

"Okay," he said absently. "It wasn't a party. We went to a Lakers game. The game was sort of lame, but Gunn had these great seats, almost courtside and there were all these famous people there."

"That must have cost a lot," Buffy mused wryly.

"I guess," Jake shrugged.

"Were there a lot of people there?" Buffy asked nonchalantly.

"Just Charlie, Gunn and a couple of other guys from the team and their dads," Jake offered quietly.

Buffy wanted to kick herself. She hadn't realized that all of the other kids' fathers would be present. Jakob had undoubtedly been the only one there without a dad. So much for him having a good time.

"I need to do some things," Jake mumbled, clearly wanting to avoid the conversation he could feel brewing.

"Okay, sweetheart," Buffy said, unwilling to press the matter just now.

He was brooding and she knew it would be impossible to talk to him about anything. At times like these, Jakob reminded her so much of his father. Sitting down on the couch, Buffy allowed herself to think of things she always kept buried.

Angel.

Jakob reminded her so much of Angel. She didn't know how or why, but Jakob was definitely the son of her first - and only - love. When she'd found out she was pregnant, she had assumed it was Riley's baby. They were lovers at the time. They had been careful, but nothing was a hundred percent effective. She figured they'd had an accident.

She'd been so horrified by the idea of trying to raise a child on the Hellmouth that she had regretfully but firmly abandoned her calling. Unwilling to risk her son's life or leave him motherless, she'd said yes when Riley proposed. She had moved to Huxley with him to try and build a new, demon-free life.

Everything had gone relatively smoothly until Jakob was born. Though Riley had never let on that he suspected anything, but she had known from the first time she held the babe that he was Angel's son.

Buffy's friends had also known.

The first time Willow had seen the child, when Jake was less than a year old, her jaw nearly hit the floor. Before the witch's visit, Buffy had been telling herself that Jakob's resemblance to Angel was all in her head, a product of her wishful thinking. It wasn't. Buffy didn't have any answers to Willow's shocked questions, swearing that her one and only physically intimate moment with the dark vampire had been on her seventeenth birthday.

When the Finns had returned to Sunnydale just after Buffy's twentieth birthday, for the sad occasion of Joyce's funeral, Giles, and Xander, had similar reactions to Jakob's appearance. The former Slayer had avoided allowing Spike to see her son for fear of what he would do with the information.

As Jakob aged, there was a smattering of gossip in Huxley suggesting that Riley wasn't his father. Buffy knew it was the work of her mother-in-law and largely due to the fact that she didn't get along with the woman. Whether he had any of his own suspicions or not, Riley had valiantly defended his wife and son.

For what it was worth, if any of the residents of Huxley had ever seen Angel, the debate would have been over regardless of Riley's claims. Jakob didn't bear what one would term a "resemblance" to the former vampire. Jakob was his mirror image. At times, Buffy could find bits of herself in her son, his eyes weren't quite as dark as Angel's and his manner was more flip, but she had no idea if that was from her or if Angel had been like mannered in his youth.

As they promised, Buffy's friends had never breathed a word to anyone. As far as the world was concerned, Jakob Finn was the natural, and only child of Riley and Buffy Finn. After Jakob, the couple had attempted to have more children, but it wasn't fated. Riley had accepted it without question saying that if God intended for them to have more children, he would provide.

God didn't provide. Buffy hadn't been so accepting and submitted to a battery of infertility tests without Riley's knowledge. As it turned out, the problem conceiving wasn't hers. In retrospect, Buffy suspected that Riley's guinea pig days had left him sterile.

At times, Buffy was grateful they'd never had anymore children. Riley's relationship with his "son" had always been rocky. When Buffy saw just how much his strained relationship with Riley affected Jakob, she wondered if it might not be time to tell her son the truth. Perhaps Jakob could still salvage some sort of relationship with Angel. Maybe it would comfort him to know just how much like his father he truly was, in all sorts of ways. Jakob had always been painfully aware of how different he was from Riley. She saw the way he looked at Gunn and Charlie sometimes.

Would it help him to know how much he was a dead ringer for his real father? He had Angel's deliberate gentleness, his brooding manner, his intellect, even his uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then, of course, the fact that he looked just like him. Now that they were living in Los Angeles, Buffy considered it more and more.

In one of his rare forthcoming moments, Angel had told Buffy about his shaky relationship with his own father and about how much trouble he'd caused in his youth. No doubt the former vampire would be able to relate to Jakob better than Riley, the eternal Boy Scout.

She sighed heavily. Jakob was such a complicated kid. He was so closed up most of the time, not due to shyness, but intentionally. He didn't like people getting close, even her. They'd never really talked about the night he got arrested, but it was the first time Buffy had given any thought to supernatural aspects of his heritage. She had been a Slayer, Angel had been a vampire. Jakob was very athletic, and *very* strong, just like his parents. The beating he'd given that stupid child was testament enough to that fact. She doubted he had any idea he could even inflict that level of damage. Surely it had scared him. How could it have not?

Buffy felt like such a failure as a parent. There was so much she should have sat down and discussed with Jakob, but she hadn't. She'd hoped that issues would resolve themselves. They hadn't. She wanted to laugh and cry and scream with the unfairness of it all. She'd done everything in her power to give Jakob a normal life, and it seemed he was fated to end up just as messed up as she was. Buffy wouldn't let that happen, she wouldn't let her son fumble his way through the darkness the way she'd been forced to. Picking up the phone, she decided to get Willow's opinion on how to proceed.

*****

When Jake came out of his room later that evening, his mother didn't hear him. She was on the phone in her room with the door slightly ajar, talking to his aunt Willow. She no doubt assumed he was asleep. Knowing he shouldn't, but not really caring, he listened carefully.

"I know, Will, it's just that sometimes he's so much like Angel," Buffy said, her voice full of tears. "I just wonder if I should tell Jakob, but I don't want to hurt him. I mean, Riley's gone now, and Jake deserves the truth. There is so much about himself that he doesn't know."

Jake froze. Angel? Who the hell was Angel?

Afraid of being discovered, he crept quietly back to his room. Angel. He'd never heard his mom mention that name before, or his dad. What had his mom meant by "Jake deserves the truth"? Truth about what? And what would his father being dead have to do with anything? And what didn't he know about himself?

"So much like Angel", the words rung in Jake's mind. Turning, he looked at the picture on his desk. It was a family portrait of sorts, the last picture they took before Riley got really sick. He picked it up, studying it carefully.

He looked at his image, studying himself minutely. As with every other time he'd done this, he could see hints of his mother in himself. The way his mouth curved, the line of his jaw all came from her. He looked at Riley. They were both tall, but that was the end of the comparison. There was nothing of his father reflected in him.

Nothing.

That concept went so much beyond just the physical. In thinking and temperament he was nothing like his father. Riley had always been outgoing, a team player, a pleaser. Jakob wasn't. Even in childhood he had always held his own counsel, been intensely private, quiet, introspective. As he'd gotten older, his behavior had become progressively more disruptive. It was no great secret that Riley couldn't begin to understand his son.

What if he wasn't Riley's son?

Jakob knew about the gossip that said Riley had been suckered into marriage. His mother had never mentioned any old boyfriends, if that was indeed who Angel was. Jake had done the math once and figured out his parents had been married because they "had" to. Had his mother conned his father into claiming some other guy's kid? Jakob smiled ruefully. That would explain a lot of his father's animosity towards him.

*****

The dream, but more vivid than it had ever been. Once again, Jakob was crouched over what he *knew* was his father's body, blood on his hands. Only this time, it wasn't Riley who lay on the ground before him. He couldn't see the man's face, he was lying on his stomach, facing away from him. He was bare from the waist up and an intricate tattoo decorated one of his shoulders.

There was more screaming, it echoed off of walls he couldn't see. The darkness pressed around him and the voice said, "He must wake again." That was how his ears heard it, that was the sound echoing off the walls, but in his mind he heard, "You must wake again."

<-- BackNext -->
Fan Fiction Archive