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If I Shoot You Will You Get Back Up? Shipping Angel and Kate
by Tania
It all starts innocently enough, detective Kate Lockley and Angel meet in a bar (City of…), something draws him to her as a person in need. It is hard to know if this is the Powers stepping in and putting Kate in Angel's path or if he just recognizes a loneliness in her that he feels in himself. Of course it may also be the fact that she is blonde, lovely to look at, and noticed him, but that's a bit superficial for our needs here.
Whatever the reason, once they begin talking there is an almost immediate connection, if not attraction. They are both at work hunting a murderer and it's hard to know how much of their conversations in the beginning are work and how much of it is genuine. They both speak of wanting to make a connection and find something real, but again, this is the cop in Kate and the detective in Angel trying to suss each other out. It is really not until I Fall to Pieces that Kate and Angel have a conversation without pretenses. When Angel goes to the police station Kate's first words are 'You're either here to ask me out on a date or for a favor." She's gone beyond subtle smiles and straight into direct flirting. At this point it is all about helping people and doing a job, but we begin to see glimmers of a relationship in smiles and understanding nods of the head. By the time Cordelia is fighting off ghosts in her apartment (Rm w/vu) Kate has no problem with Angel turning up in her office, even giving him information about past crimes to help his current cases.
It is at this point that we really start to see Kate's personality come out, and see Angel's reaction to her. Kate is powerful; she muscles a criminal around more than a little (Sense and Sensitivity). She's certainly not superhuman like Angel's used to, but there's more than a little cause to think he is attracted to strong women. Kate's police record shows that she has received the Medal of Valour and the Citizen's Auxillary Merit award, amongst other decorations for her service. She also shows determination and stamina when interrogating the criminal for hours; it is only when her male coworkers pull her off of him that she backs away. It is also at this time that Kate goes to Angel and asks him to help her with a case involving mobsters.
"You don't want to get a reputation for going outside the department."
"I don't want to get a reputation for getting you killed."
Angel and Kate in Sense and Sensitivity
It is during Sense and Sensitivity that we start to see more of Kate's overt flirting. While she is under the influence of the 'talking stick' Kate invites Angel to her father's retirement party. She shows great relief when he agrees, which he does readily. It is at the party that we get our biggest glimpse into Kate's past and present relationship with her father. It is also at this party that Angel advises Kate to "picture everyone in their underwear," before she gives a speech, Kate's reply of "way ahead of you," is priceless. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse afterwards. When introducing Angel to her father, Trevor, his comment that he is "Glad to see her out with a man," as he was "Starting to think she was leaning in the other direction."
The truly painful scene comes later when Kate describes her childhood after her mother's death. She describes trying to get to know a father who doesn't know how to be anything but a cop, how he had told her "big girls don't cry, gone is gone," etc. Her father's refusal to tell her that her mother had gone to a better place, his inability to even tell "a scared little girl a beautiful lie," weighs on her even as an adult. Kate says repeatedly throughout the course of the series that she only became a cop so she could know her father in a professional way, since she was unable to connect with him as a daughter. This theme with her father clouds much of her relationship with Angel over the next two years.
Sense and Sensitivity also shows us Kate and Angel's relationship blossoming into something leaning on the romantic side of friendship. Kate tells Angel she sees "such an old soul" in his eyes, adding that she though "the whole enigmatic thing was an act to meet women," but that she now realized he was genuinely a nice guy and cared for her. He proves this later in the episode, even ending the night with a hug, and again in Somnambulist when he helps her capture the vampire Penn, who he himself sired.
"Not that the brooding man of mystery thing isn't working for you,
it is. A lot."
Kate to Angel in Somnambulist
Like so many of Angel's relationships, the truth about his past always comes out. For Kate, the truth is harder to bear because here is a man whom she considers a friend and ally, and trusts to the point of risking her badge, and he turns out to be something she can hardly believe in even when face to face with his demon. When she learns of Penn, and subsequently Angel's past, she becomes a bit of an overnight expert, researching both vampirism in general and Angelus' deeds, describing him, as she has seen in the volumes of books she finds, as "a particularly evil bastard." Her anger at his lies is apparent, but it is equally clear that a large part of her anger is over not only finding out her friend is a demon, but that a potential lover is a monster.
After the revelation of Angel's vampirism, it is several weeks before Kate comes around, and then only in the line of duty (I've Got You Under My Skin). Again in The Prodigal, she comes to him in an official capacity, just as he has killed a demon. When Angel recognizes Kate's father as being at the scene of the fight, Angel asks if he's okay.
"No. You don't get to do that."
"What?"
"Kill a demon in front of me and then act like we're going to have a cappuccino
together, it doesn't work that way."
"How does it work?"
"I'm not convinced it does. Look, no offense, I think you're probably a
pretty decent guy for what you are, but let's keep this strictly business all
right, we don't get personal, I'm not your girlfriend."
Kate to Angel in The Prodigal
Angel later goes to Trevor Lockley's home, warning him that he is looking out for Kate even if her own father won't. Angel also flashes back to visions of his own father's lack of faith in him. It is fairly safe to say that Angel over-identifies with Kate's need to win her father's acceptance. It is much to Angel's chagrin that he finds out Kate's father is involved in illegal demon drug ring. When he finds that the people he is dealing with aren't people but vampires, he is too late to save him. In fact Angel is forced to watch two vampires kill Trevor from the doorway, unable to enter and fight them until it is too late and Trevor's soul has left the body.
It is only natural that after Kate's father is killed by vampires she pulls away from Angel. Once again she is left to mourn the loss of a parent with no one at her side to tell her things will be okay, it is the beginning of her downward spiral, and all Angel can do is watch. She distances herself and reminds him on every possible occasion that he is not human. However, this is also when she starts seeking out the stranger cases that come across her desk. It isn't long before she is reaching out to him again, but now their interactions are much more about Kate trying to understand the world she now believes in so completely she can't see anything but the demons.
When Kate comes to get Faith (Sanctuary) she has Angel arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive, there is no longer any semblance of friendship in her voice. She even goes so far as to threaten to put him in a cell with eastern exposure. Luckily her threats are empty, and when Faith turns herself in for the multiple beatings and murders she has committed, all is seemingly forgiven.
Angel's second season is spent with Kate and Angel mainly at odds, they do come together during The Thin Dead Line, when Kate is again forced to deal with the loss of her father, but it is a brief reconciliation. By the time Angel locks Darla and Drusilla in the wine cellar with 30 lawyers from Wolfram and Hart (Reunion), Kate is on her way to self-destruction, cutting herself off from Angel completely.
In the end though, when Kate has lost her job and ingested a bottle of pills and Angel has hit rock bottom, firing his crew and sleeping with Darla (Reprise), they come together again (Epiphany). Angel calls it an epiphany, but really he's finishing what he started…saving Kate.
Angel and Kate go through an emotional roller coaster for nearly two years, and while the tension remains on some level until the end, when Kate walks away they are once again friends. There are a lot of scenarios throughout the series that lend themselves to fic writing, and luckily, or unluckily depending on your opinion of the pairing, few of them have been written. Whether they are early first season stories of two people getting to know each other, or later tales motivated by Sense and Sensitivity under-the-influence connections or mourning the loss of a father there are many emotional twists to be exploited in fic. Of course it could just be more vampire exploration, anger over withholding evidence, or just plain loneliness that brings them together, it's all up to you, and I encourage you to try.