Act I Scene I ~ Act I Scene II ~ Act I Scene III
Act II Scene I ~ Act II Scene II ~ Act II Scene III ~ Act II Scene IV ~ Act II Scene V
Act III Scene I ~ Act III Scene II ~ Act III Scene III ~ Act III Scene IV ~ Act III Scene V ~ Act III Scene VI ~ Act III Scene VII
Act IV Scene I ~ Act IV Scene II ~ Act IV Scene III ~ Act IV Scene IV ~ Act IV Scene V
Act V Scene I ~ Act V Scene II ~ Act V Scene III ~ Act V Scene IV ~ Act V Scene V ~ Act V Scene VI
The Rest Is Silence
Written by Christine
He was dead. He was sure of it. Or would’ve been but for the lingering thought that if he was dead, why was he thinking? Death to him was always an oblivion; a nothingness that was not so much hell, as it was, well, not this.
This was nothingness, all right, but there were
things there; he could feel them, sense them, almost, almost, smell them
just out of reach. One brushed his arm, and a shiver of desire rushed through
him; it was enough to bring him to his knees, wanting to beg and plead for
whoever, whatever, to fulfill him, oh, please yes! But he didn’t, fall
to his knees or beg, because that wasn’t who he was. Sheer force of will kept
him upright, through his cock was hard as stone.
Well, now, that was unexpected, wasn’t it?
A faint giggle echoed along the darkness, reached out to caress him. Another shock of desire, but he was prepared, or nearly so, for it this time. It wasn’t, he realized as he continued to stand, eternally grateful he didn’t need to breathe for he wasn’t sure he could, desire of his own free will. This was more a compulsion. Something that reached out and made him want.
Want with a physical pain. Want to beg for release. Want the creatures that floated in the darkness just beyond his senses with a need that just about eclipsed all else.
What the fuck?
He’d said it aloud, apparently, or they, whoever in the worlds they were, read his mind.
“You’re mistaken about Us,” one voice said, soft and lilting. Another caress. “We aren’t completely evil.”
To that he did raise an eyebrow and offered a mocking snort. “And who might you be?”
“We are the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart,” another voice said, and he jerked in surprise to the vague direction of the sound.
“You are, are you?”
“We are,” a third voice said. “And We want you.”
“Ah, well,” he made a show of turning in a circle, looking in all directions of the void that surrounded him. “As it seems I’m not going anywhere, I’d say that was already a fact.”
The first voice giggled, brushed his arm again. Gritting his teeth against the desire not his own that flashed through him, he waited. “We want you to Rule, my darling,” she said, at least the voice sounded feminine. “We want you to Rule our Empire, take what the Black Thorne so carelessly destroyed and Conquer.”
“Black Thorne, yes.” There was a vague memory of that, killing and bloodlust. Of an affinity with his other. “And here I was thinking ‘twas you who wanted them out of the way and made it easier for us to actually win.”
“You did not win,” Voice #3 shot at him. “You died.”
He shrugged, smiled. Heard the growl of disapproval from one of them – probably the third – and smiled wider. He so hated playing by others’ rules. “And yet here I stand.” He swept his arms wide, encompassing his new domain, laughed at that and at them. And, hell, at himself, too. “You obviously wanted me for something.”
“We brought you here,” Voice #3 said hotly, “because it suits Us to have done so. We can just as easily send you back to die. With everyone else.”
“They’re not dead yet?” he shook his head, the smile still there. Really, whoever Voice #3 was, it wasn't good with the keeping of secret plans notion. Idiots. “Pity.”
“No,” Voice #1 sighed. “Look.”
With a glance to his right where he thought the voice came from, he saw the void part and a scene he did remember come into view. It was not, however, the one from the fight he’d been expecting. Watching it, Angelus remembered all that happened, not just what the voices showed him.
Angel – they – sat at his desk, phone cradled to his ear, utter despair hunching his shoulders, dark eyes bleak. Yes, Angelus remembered this scene. Remembered the first time in over a century when soul and demon were together. On the only thing either of them cared about.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Angel?” The soft whispered caress of his name had only ever sounded that sweet on one person’s lips, and he closed his eyes in longing and despair.
“Buffy…”
“Are you okay?” The question was inane, and he wanted to shout ‘No! No, I’m not okay, I need you!’ But he didn’t.
“Does it matter?” he asked instead, the question just as useless as hers.
“You know it does, baby. It always has – to me, it always has. I made arrangements; I’m on my way to LA. My plane gets in at midnight…”
No! Angelus roared. Don’t bring her here to get killed in your pathetic crusade. This is your fight. Don’t involve her in something she has no need to be involved in. I don’t care what you do stop her.
Shut up! Angel shot back, hand gripping the phone tighter. Do you think I want her hurt? Do you think I want her involved in something I know will get her hurt…get her killed? I can’t take that, and I know you can’t, either.
“I don’t need your help,” Angel said to Buffy, closing his eyes against the pain that nearly crippled him.
Her swift intake of breath was followed by an intangible surge of her pain through their connection. Soul and Demon were briefly surprised they could feel her through a connection that wasn’t used to being open. To sharing, not like it once was. But it was only a moment before she composed herself, before all emotion was cut off from him.
God, baby… his face rippled in empathy, the demon and back again, before he regained control. The fingers of his free hand gripped the desk, crushing it beneath her pain.
“Why? You need help; it just so happens that it’s my job.” Her voice was even, steady, as if he should know all this already, as if she knew that his words were merely a pretense. Always smart, his girl.
Angel swallowed painfully, and for a split second, the temptation was more than he could bare. To have her by his side, to see her, feel her, touch her. Kiss her. Oh, God, baby…I want you here, but not this way…not now…please, not like this…
“Buffy, no.” The cold emotionless tone in his voice surprised even the demon. Oh, he approved of the soul’s words, though hated, raged, that once more she was hurt because of him…because of them. Them.
Angel felt it, the knowledge that his heartless words made her heart bleed more than anything Angelus did or said at the height of his reign. Anything he, himself, had said to her to rip out her heart and squash it beneath his heel.
I’m so sorry, beloved.
Buffy bit her lip, tried to keep her voice from quivering. Mostly succeeded. “Do you really believe I would have refused you, Angel, had I known? I didn’t know about the girl. They didn’t tell me. I had to learn about it…elsewhere.”
For a moment, the relief was so acute he wanted to drop to the desk and weep with it, with the tiny spark of hope that burned brighter now. He closed his eyes against the sweetness that knowledge brought; she hadn’t known, hadn’t refused him, still believed in him. And the rift he’d known of between watcher and slayer, between friends and confidents and slayer, was as large and gaping as it had been.
And she was just as hurt by it, though even that, he thought as he cautiously opened their connection further, was less. Less than it would’ve been just three years ago.
I’m going to kill them all for hurting her. For betraying her. For using her.
Somehow, in the next few days, that knowledge would have to be enough.
“It doesn’t really matter, Buffy. I’ve survived years without you and a bunch of wannabe slayers; I’ll make it through this as well.”
“I know” she murmured sympathetically, understanding, knowing that while the initial hurt between them wasn’t hers, she hadn’t helped. Not in the end. “But you don’t have to; not any longer, Angel.”
“I’m not.” But the precious gift she’d offered was there, open and shining. This time the gasp wasn’t silenced, couldn’t be. The trembling in her voice came through the phone so clearly, Angel wondered he didn’t bleed from it.
“So it is true; you’re in love with someone else now,” she whispered so softly even he had trouble hearing her. The desk groaned and splintered under his hand, the phone cracked in his other.
Swallowing past the pain threatening to close off her throat, she said calmly, “Do you really think so little of me, now, that you believe I would let you face an apocalypse alone rather than deal with the fact you’ve moved on?”
And, grateful he couldn’t see her, Buffy turned into the wall hunching over the phone, willing the physical pain away, but it was no use. It hurt, oh, dear God, it hurt. But then did she really have any say in his life? She’d been gone a long time, had moved on, or tried to, failed at it, but had thrown it in his face.
Buffy forced her mind carefully blank, took one deep breath, swore she sensed Angel right there, next to her, offering balm for her wounds, comfort for her pain, but then he was gone, taking that wonderful, fleeting glimpse with him. Slipping off the leash that held the Slayer tightly bound within her, Buffy drew another steadying breath. Felt the Slayer sigh with release, relief; probing boundaries, wondering at this sudden freedom.
Her voice, when it came again, at last, was controlled and decisive; the consummate professional. “Fine; you don’t need me. You made that abundantly clear years ago, Angel. I got it then, and I get it now. Get over yourself, this isn’t about you anymore; you don’t need help, alright, fine. What about Wes and your friend, Gunn? They don’t have the benefit of a demon within that loves nothing better than to kill and destroy. How many demons can they take down before they get themselves killed? Experience will help, and skill, but in the end they’re only human, and there are limits to their strength. I have strength, skill, experience, not to mention the accelerated healing that’s all part of the Slayer package. And a nifty new Scythe,” she added with forced humor.
Focus, Soulboy. I’ve lost her twice because of your idiocy. Don’t let her come here to die again because you’re a moron.
I lost her too... And the pain of that was just as fresh for soul as it was for demon.
Then end this, now.
He closed his eyes willed away pain and grief, sorrow, and love. Hardened his heart, tried to forget just how much he desperately loved her.
Forgive me, baby, but I can’t lose you, too. You’re the one person I can’t lose.
Summoning his most condescending tone, Angel still couldn’t open his eyes, afraid that, if he did, Buffy would be standing right there, glaring at him with a knowing look that said she knew every word out of his mouth was a crock of shit.
“Yes, I’m sure your little toy is most effective, Buffy, but you are, as usual, missing the point. I’m not talking about a couple of little vamps in need of staking. We haven’t seen one another in years, while these people – my friends – and I have fought together, bled together. And trust one another.”
And that crock of shit just kept getting deeper and deeper. He was drowning with every word uttered, and wondered, on the extreme off chance he survived, how he’d ever swim back to shore, back to her life. Friends? Ha, they knew nothing about him and cared for and trusted him about as much as…well, about as much as Buffy’s friends did her.
“When I go into this fight, I want to know there’s someone at my back I can trust. Frankly, you’re not the first person that comes to mind. My team and I know each other inside and out. When I go into battle tomorrow, I want to know I have someone at my back that will get the job done. Someone who lives in the real world, not the bleeding heart bullshit the Watcher’s Council and your pet watcher have fed you all your life.”
The desk broke again, and Angel moved his hand over to grasp another part of it. The pain didn’t steady him, didn’t focus him. It reminded him that, in agreeing with Buffy, he was putting her life in danger. He couldn’t do that. No matter what he had to say to convince her of his lies. If for no other reason, Angel knew that because of the lies he now said to his only love, he was going to Hell.
“I need someone capable of thinking for herself, doing whatever its takes to get the job done without calling a time out so she can check with her Watcher to see if its okay, or if her little friends are hurt or not. You’re how old and all still living in one another’s pockets? It’d be pathetic if it wasn’t so laughable. Stay wherever your at, Buffy; let the adults handle this. I don’t have the patience to deal with your little entourage, and that seems to be a package deal where you’re concerned.”
Another crack of the desk and he stopped crushing it, instead pressing his hand as forcibly as he could into the splintering wood and metal, hoping the nominal pain from that would help. It didn’t. Even while his mouth gave voice to the words best designed to hurt her, his heart bled at them, offering whatever condolences he silently could.
“If you come over here and Xander follows you, I’ll just have to ship what’s left of him home in a box when I put you back on the plane. And I have better, more pleasurable, things to do with my time. It’s not personal, baby; I’ve just gotten use to playing with adults. You’ll see in the long run. It’s for the best.”
Silently, he hung up, unable to continue the lies regardless of his motives. He could see her face, her eyes; feel her pain; he knew she was there, right there no matter how he tried to close the connection between them before she realized he was full of bullshit. He couldn’t move, didn’t know what to do next.
He’d lied to the only woman he’d ever love before what was most likely his last battle. She was never going to forgive him. But she’d be safe. And that was all that mattered.
For once, even Angelus was silent within.
The clapping from the doorway jerked his head up from the ruined desk. Angel hadn’t even realized he’d laid his head on the desk, hadn’t realized he wasn’t alone. Hadn’t realized a lone tear tracked down his cheek. But then tears were never solitary, and more gathered in his eyes, in his heart.
“That was quite a performance, mate. For a bleedin’ minute there, I thought Angelus was running around loose. Bravo, definitely,” Spike nodded. Swaggering in, Angel noticed the door was still closed, and silently thanked whatever sense Spike had to close it. “You might’ve fooled her for as long as it takes her to catch her breath, but then she’ll be on that plane, on her way over here, and kicking your ass.”
Spike paused, tilted his head. “Like to see that, actually.” But then he shrugged. “I never did believe the hogwash that little blighter Andrew was spewing anyway.”
Angel stiffened, pushed down the instinctive growl at soul/demon’s rush of fury over Spike’s infringement on anything regarding Buffy. He deliberately turned his back on his childe and wandered to the windows. High above civilization, the unobstructed sun shone coldly down on him, offering him no comfort, only the reality that he was still as far removed from her as he had been years ago.
“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped. “By the time she gets here, it’ll be over. One way or the other.”
“Well, if you ask me….”
Now Angel did growl, spun around and stalked to Spike, wrapping claws around the younger’s throat before Spike could blink. “I didn’t ask you, boy. We’re not doing this. Not now, not ever, not where Buffy is concerned. Understood?”
Spike nodded, calm and collected even with his life in immanent danger. A flash of understanding lighted his eyes for a moment, and Angel released him. Fuck, even Spike saw though him. Was he really losing his touch? Or, when it came to Buffy, was he just that transparent?
“Sure mate. Whatever you say. But I’m still watching her kick your ass.”
Angelus turned from the scene, his face impassive, his heart, once so emotionless, ached at the replay. He hated hurting her. Hated when she hurt. Still didn’t see another way around it. Knew it was the one thing both he and Angel agreed on. Angel…no, Angelus couldn’t sense him anyplace. He was truly gone, then.
Though he’d roast in a thousand soulful hells before admitting it, was glad Angel had finally found peace. Away from him, and it was about damned time, but some small part of him was glad that Angel was finally at peace. Besides, having to listen to Angel’s torment had grown tiresome.
“Been there, witnessed that,” he shrugged, indifferent. “What’s it have to do with anything?”
“You lost,” Voice #2 said, matter of factly. “You lost and died, everyone did in that alleyway. We didn’t want it that way, so We removed you from the body.”
A slight jolt of panic stiffened him in surprise. “Well, that’s a nice change,” he said, all graceful arrogance. “Usually they’re removing the soul. So you have me. Congratulations.”
“We have you,” Voice #3 continued, obviously the shortest tempered of the group, “because We desire you.”
Yeah, he got that alright. His cock still throbbed, release a beg away.
“The soul is gone, never able to reinhabit your body. You have the choice – stay here forever, in your prison,” and Angelus wondered if unfulfilled lust was his eternal punishment. It was a good one, that was for sure.
“Or,” Voice #1 continued, “Rule our Empire.”
“And what do I get if I say yes?”
“Everything,” Voice #1 whispered in his ear, and his shudder of need was evident this time. Cursing himself for a weakness he wasn’t entirely sure was his doing, Angelus turned to look where the voice hovered.
“All your desires fulfilled.”
“Really? Think you can manage that?” He shrugged again. That was a joke, though they were certainly welcome to try. There was only one woman in his existence who made him so uncontrolled, and yet he’d still managed to retain at least a semblance of that. Did these three voices, the supposed Wolf, Ram, and Hart, really think they could strip his control?
“Okay, so you want me. And you’ve made sure I want you. I’ll fuck you until you bleed, but then I’ll still be the master of my fate.” They needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed them, or they wouldn’t have pulled him from that alley like they had.
“Send me back.”
“The almighty Powers that Be,” Voice #2 said thoughtfully, though quite sarcastically, “returned Angel to the body once, can you ensure they won’t again?”
“No,” he smirked. “You can send me back, and I can – and will – be evil again, but it will be for me. I’m my own master, and if our goals coincide – all the better. But this is the chance you take; I won’t let anyone willingly control me.”
“No one?” Voice #3 inquired. “Not even…Buffy?” Her image materialized before him, looking rumpled and sexy. The image smiled, beckoning him to her with a tilt of her head.
“I won’t,” he said coldly, “discuss her with you. Try harder; I wrote the book on emotional manipulation. Take my offer, or leave it.”
“Accepted.”
Chuckling, he rose from the impressively large bed they’d conjured to sit dead center in the room. Hell, it was even more impressive than the one Angel had, and Angelus knew the soulled fuck was just as luxury-minded as he was.
Silently padding to the windows, he looked out at the Los Angeles night. He was unconcerned with his nakedness, unconcerned with the three…females, he’d left in the bed. It wasn’t his bed, and he really didn’t care what they did there without him. They thought to control him, nothing more, and failed in that completely.
He’d fucked the Wolf, Ram, and Hart, and while he was sure they didn’t bleed, they weren’t so quick to take him on again. In fact, he distinctly heard a faint plea for him to stop. Laughing again, Angelus moved to the sidebar, pouring himself some whisky.
He needed a shower to get the stench of sex off him. Hell, it was a decent fuck, but nothing more. Other than the rare exception of Buffy, sex was as reflexive as feeding – it was fun, it was necessary, and there were those who offered better than average, but it wasn’t something to toll bells over. They didn’t stir his passions, not his real ones, at least. It was more their own lust transferred to him, or something really freaky like that, than it was him wanting them.
No, they were prey, nothing more. He was the master. He was in control. And he was going to use them, show them who was boss, until he didn’t need them any longer. They couldn’t control him, and Angelus thought he’d proven that quite well during the past night or so. They might’ve thought they could because he was a vampire and therefore intensely passionate, but they knew nothing about him.
They didn’t understand the difference between him and every other vampire out there. He wasn’t controlled by his desires, his passions, his needs. (Except that one time, but it was best not to remember Acathla and the incredible loss of control he’d had because Buffy refused him.)
No, they weren’t important. Heading for the shower, Angelus didn’t even bother to look at the bed where the three senior partners still slept.
Was his night with them cheating on Buffy? That gave him a moment’s pause. But no. It wasn’t cheating on her because they were simply a means to an end, an end that involved Buffy and all the pleasures to be had with his mate. They weren’t important at all.
~~~~~~~~~~
*heartfelt sigh*
The mistake most people, and I do use that term loosely, make regarding Angelus is that they think they can control someone who doesn’t even know the word ‘control’ exists where he's concerned. The Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart got what they wanted – Angelus. Angelus as the sole occupant of the body.
Having him where they wanted him didn’t mean anything unless he was doing what they wanted, when they wanted it now does it? Kinda like an old play on the ‘be careful what you wish for, you might get it’ line.
They had decided to ride the Dragon; problem is, Angelus is someone who will eat them alive before they fall, and they won’t know what hit them until it was entirely too late...
There was anger. No, actually, first there was hurt. Deep, cutting hurt that made her want to curl up in a ball and cry until there was nothing left. Nothing at all.
That lasted until she hung up the phone, and then she punched several holes into the apartment wall. Calmer then, Buffy – forcing herself to breathe and think without the red haze that temporarily eased the blinding pain – realized Angel’s tactics.
Bastard. Smart, smarmy, sneaky bastard, but still a bastard.
“I’m still going, Angel,” she said and picked up her duffle. Grabbing her weapon’s bag and the special pass she had for her scythe and swords, Buffy walked out of her room.
“Dawn!” she yelled. “I’m going to LA! Be back when the apocalypse is over!”
“Okay,” Dawn called back, racing for the door. Hugging her tightly she said, “Be careful, come back safe, no missing limbs, no unhealable wounds. Don’t kill Angel for being an ass,” she held up a hand to forestall the outburst Buffy’s narrowed eyes indicated. “What? It’s not hard not to eavesdrop on your conversations.” She hugged Buffy again. “Come back safe.”
“Love you,” Buffy kissed her cheek. “Don’t listen to Andrew, call Andreas once a day to tell him you’re safe, and check in with Giles if you really feel the need.”
“I’ll call Andreas,” Dawn promised, opening the door. “But I’m not calling Giles. If he doesn’t care about us, I’m not calling him. Besides, Andreas is across the hall. Easier to do. I don’t get the international codes yet.”
Buffy kissed her cheek and left. “Ready or not, Angel, here I come.”
“He’s dead.”
The words were said in a flat, unemotional tone. Words she’d say in reading about a poor stranger’s bad luck in a hit and run, or in some other accident where the poor bastard wasn’t known, only mourned in the extreme abstract. They conveyed none of the angst she felt. None of the heartbreak, the soul-tearing grief. She looked out the windows, watching Rome at night, and said those two words with absolutely no feeling whatsoever.
Her tears overflowed.
Her fingers trembled.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her heart felt as if someone had driven a stake through her, leaving her still alive to feel every nuance of pain, to breathe in every breath knowing he wasn’t there, somewhere in this world, too. Knowing that he was truly gone. Dead. Ash. He’d never hold her again. Never smile at her. She’d never feel that cool touch of his big hand, so capable, so gentle. Never feel his lips against hers. Never hear him say those coveted words, ‘I love you’…
She didn’t turn around, didn’t look at anyone else in the room. With absolute certainty, Buffy knew he was dead. Knew she’d fly back to LA and clean up those demons he hadn’t been able to. Knew it as well as she knew that in fighting those creatures he left behind, those he couldn’t kill in the little time he had to do so, she’d die as well.
She’d arrived in LA somewhere in the endish of the fight. That was Angel’s doing, she was sure of it – start the fight earlier so she wasn’t there. Jerk. Buffy had never seen Angel. The hoards of hell were overwhelming, and by the time she fought her way to the center, where she knew Angel fought, there wasn’t…
“I’m going back to LA,” she continued in that same cold, emotionless voice. “I’m going to clean up, to finish what they started.”
She’d only come back here to check on Dawn. To make sure nothing horrible had happened in her absence. To kill that final hope that maybe Angel had made it out alive and was waiting for her in Rome…
She knew he wasn’t.
“Buffy-” Giles began from where he sat, flying in from London when he heard the news. The first time he contacted her since they closed the Hellmouth. Since he admitted he didn’t trust her. Six plus years together, and he didn’t trust her.
“Buffy-” Willow began from where she sat with her lover, Kennedy, still so smug, still so sure in her absoluteness as slayer, flying in from Brazil when they heard the news. The first time she contacted Buffy since seeing the world with her new ‘true love’.
“Buffy-” Xander began from where he leaned against the door, flying in from Paris, or wherever he was this week. The first time he bothered to even acknowledge he knew her, let alone what went on in the shadows he’d fought for over seven years.
“Buffy-” Andrew began, standing next to Xander, somehow still there even though Buffy never did remember inviting him anyplace. Once upon a moment, she’d have said it was because he did help, and she had a weakness for helping the helpless. In his case hopeless. That was a long time ago. Another person.
“Buffy-” Dawn began. “Be careful.”
Buffy jerked her head to the side, just enough to acknowledge she heard her sister’s voice among the censure of the others. The acceptance. The fear. The knowledge that this was something that had to be done. That she needed to do.
“I’ll call Faith?” Dawn continued. “She’ll want to know. Want to help.”
Buffy nodded. Faith. The only person who’s phone number she had. The only one who bothered to keep in touch with Buffy after everything. The only one who understood, finally, finally understood what it was like to be the Slayer. To be the Leader. To be The One.
They left eventually. They always did. Everyone left her. Angel, her dad, her mom. Even Dawnie, though they’d managed to work through that. It probably had as much to do with the fact that Dawn was made from her as it did that they were sisters. But they’d made up. The rest. Her friends…Buffy remembered a time when she would have given a lot to have their acceptance. College. Riley. Work. But now…
Now Angel was dead. Now he was gone. She knew that deep within her. Before someone named Connor called to confirm that. She’d known something was off. That the world was no longer right. Connor. Buffy was meeting him in two days, outside LA.
In their house. Her and Angel’s place.
Buffy was meeting him, and there he was going to explain what she already knew. Connor was Angel’s son. His beautiful child stolen from him. She was finally going to meet him. After Angel’s death.
Angel’s death.
Angel was dead.
They’d finally left, and only when she was alone again did she break down. Her sobs hurt, ripping from deep within her where she held her love for him, her hope for their future. She collapsed on the floor, and cried for him.
Dawn watched her sister sleep fitfully on the couch. She’d come home again that morning, exhausted and covered with various blood, goo, and dust. But no Angel. It’d been months now, and still Buffy couldn’t find him. Could find nothing of their battle but crumbled buildings behind the hotel Angel’d once owned and decomposing carcasses of various demons.
“Angel,” Buffy murmured in her sleep, one hand thrown out as if to stop him. Or bring him closer.
Angel was dead. Dawn knew that, intellectually at least. She knew he was dead as surely as if she’d seen his ashes herself. She just couldn’t say it aloud. Nor was she going to be the one to tell Buffy what the slayer already knew.
As she had the past mornings, Dawn set about making breakfast. Eggs, sausage, toast, milk, and OJ. A balanced breakfast to get Buffy through the workday. A day spent teaching at the East LA Community College, a job found for her by a former Sunnydale resident who remembered what she did for the town, even if he and his wife hadn’t fully understood who Buffy really was.
Buffy had thanked them, then warned them that things were going to get a lot worse than they ever were in Sunnydale and they’d better prepare. As far as Dawn could tell, they’d listened and headed for Montana or some such middle-of-nowhere place.
Connor had moved in the next day. He took the morning patrol, insisting on it so Buffy could sleep. They all knew it was because he felt he owed it to Angel for not being at that final battle. Besides, he’d said with that cocky smile that made Buffy’s breath catch, demons move in the daylight, too.
As the sausage cooked, Dawn wondered if today was the day she could convince Buffy to call in sick. To take the day to herself, to rest, please, just sleep. It wouldn’t happen, and Dawn knew that.
No, Buffy would wake in…Dawn looked at the clock. An hour if Dawn prayed enough and was quiet enough. ‘Refreshed’ from her three hours of sleep, she’d shower off the grim, eat breakfast, and head to campus. She’d then teach her three classes, eat lunch if Dawn called her cell enough times, meet with anyone wanting extra lessons in self-defense or the variety of martial arts she knew, and head home. She’d then crash for another hour, maybe two if Dawn threatened the rest of their apartment building enough and the noise didn’t drift to Buffy, eat the dinner Dawn made and insisted she eat, and leave.
For patrol, she said.
For Angel, Dawn knew.
The sound of the shower starting jerked Dawn out of her revere, and she glanced down at the sausage. Not yet done…meaning Buffy hadn’t slept her normal three hours. Meaning she’d either heard something or saw something about Angel.
“Something’s coming, isn’t it,” Dawn said quietly when Buffy appeared fifteen minutes later.
“Yeah.” Silently, she sat at the table, stared at the food in front of her.
Alive only through sheer force of will. Alive only because those who’d murdered Angel were still alive. Dawn knew that and hated it. Hated them.
“The apocalypse…it’s not over, is it.” Dawn almost said his name, Angel’s name, but caught herself before even the pause was noticed. Knew Buffy knew what she meant anyway. The apocalypse Angel died trying to prevent wasn’t over. He’d died for nothing. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Buffy admitted, and began eating. That scared Dawn more than her admitted ignorance.
“I want you and Connor gone, though.” Buffy looked up then, and Dawn’s fear grew exponentially. Buffy was scared. Not just tired, not just defeated. Scared. Even when fighting Angelus or the Master or Glory, even when fighting the First, Buffy hadn’t been scared. Now she was.
The world was going to hell, Dawn was certain of that.
“I want you and Connor to leave,” she said. “Head to Canada, as far away as you can. Avoid major towns, but stop in every holy place you can find. Get a blessing from the priest or whoever. Collect every holy relic you can.”
“Canada!” Dawn sat up straighter in her chair. “No, we’re staying with you! I’m not leaving; I’m not going to be sent away like a child.”
Buffy was out of her seat in a second, holding Dawn’s arms and shaking her slightly. “Dawnie, listen to me! I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is that there’re more demons now than there were when we got here. And there’s less help. It’s dangerous out there, and only going to get more so.”
“I don’t even speak Canadian!”
Buffy stopped whatever she was going to say and laughed. It was harsh, as if she wasn’t used to doing so, and Dawn knew she wasn’t. It’d been four months since Angel’s death, and Buffy hadn’t laughed once in that time.
“They speak English, Dawn,” Buffy said tiredly, slowly releasing her arms. “Please. Be safe. Go away, north to Canada, south to the Mexican jungles or wherever. Just get as far away from LA as you can. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t trust anyone. Keep garlic on you at all times, and a stake and sword.”
“Buffy-”
“Dawn, please.” The tired Buffy was back. The not quite defeated one. The desperate one. “I can’t lose you, too.”
“I don’t like the cold,” Connor said as they crossed the Mexican boarder. “But my Spanish sucks.”
Dawn sat still in the seat beside him and stared straight ahead. He wasn’t sure she actually saw anything, however. When she spoke, it was one of the first things she’d said since leaving a teary-eyed Buffy at the apartment they’d shared.
“Buffy’s going to die again.”
He wanted to say she wasn’t. He wanted to tell Dawn that her sister was going to be just fine and that she’d win, of course she would. He wanted to know that he hadn’t been a coward in leaving. But then no one seemed to say no to Buffy, not as far as he could tell. And not in the mood she was in now.
“She wanted you to live,” he pointed out, the lies and false platitudes unable to slip past his lips. “She wanted both of us to, and she doesn’t even know me.”
Dawn turned then to stare at him and Connor detected shock on her pretty face. “You’re Angel’s son,” she said as if that explained it all. “If you die, so does the last piece of Angel. Buffy can’t stand that thought, the way you’ve seen her…” she shook her head, turned back to staring out the windshield.
“It’s not Buffy at all. Even when she had to kill him, even when he left, even when…all of that, things,” she added quietly, “I’m probably not supposed to know about but somehow do anyway. She’s always been strong. She’s the Slayer, the fighter. Angel’s death killed her. Her body’s just fighting until his death is avenged.”
“And us?” Connor asked, “What of us?”
“We live. And she dies knowing we did.”
It hit her as if someone had yanked her out of heaven. Again. The pain of it, the blissful pain of it was like a lightening strike. Beautiful and painful at the same time. Filling and pulling, peace, pain, friend, lover, enemy.
“Angel…”
He was back. He was alive. She felt him as surely as she had felt him die. The spark that linked her to him was back, burning softly, burning as a tiny seed within her. But it burned all the same.
He was alive.
And he was Angelus…
~~~~~~~~~~
So I didn’t know how bad things were until I forced myself to contact Giles. I knew Evil was amassing, and that they were planning an offensive to rival all the apocalypses I’d ever defeated combined. But I didn’t know…. Then again, the talking between me and the gang had dwindled to a trickle months ago. Still, with so much to loose I had thought at least Giles would admit he needed help. I was wrong…
On more than one part of it, too. When it comes to love, I’m such an idiot.
Giles looked out his window, feeling older now than he had just yesterday. And older yesterday than the day before. Things weren’t going well. In fact, they were going to hell faster than he could keep up. He was more glad than he could say that Willow had decided to stay with him after Buffy’s rather abrupt and somewhat selfish departure several months ago.
Xander entered just then, having decided to reconnect with Willow and stay to help for a while. Giles wasn’t sure ‘a while’ was going to work, and figured it looked like they were all caught in this latest apocalypse.
“I think your going to want to see these reports, Giles.”
Xander held a stack of papers he unceremoniously threw on the desk. He didn’t bother to look at them, but waved a single sheet of paper, instead. Giles glanced at the stack, then back to Xander. The patch over his eye made him look hard, but it was the look in his good eye that told Giles two things.
One was that the Xander he’d known for years was still there, buried beneath the newly hardened man who had to find his way in life alone. The second was that the news he carried was far from good.
“How bad?”
“All,” Xander admitted, “and then some. According to the eggheads, 60% of the slayers called when Buffy shared her powers are dead. Apparently, about 10% of that figure can be attributed to hazards of the job. That,” he shrugged, “and recklessness. The rest…” he trailed off, looked blankly at his paper and handed it to Giles.
“The rest look suspiciously like a concentrated effort to eliminate Slayers before we can get them trained enough to protect themselves, much less others. From what I hear, or okay, what Willow says, Dawn’s safe with some kid. No supernatural trouble, though Buffy refused to say who the kid was.”
“I still believe sending Dawn to her father’s would’ve been a better idea,” Giles put in, shaking his head. “With Buffy refusing to tell us anything, keeping Dawn safe is that much harder.”
“Dawn trusted this guy, or she wouldn’t have gone.”
“Dawn,” Giles said what they both already knew, “will trust anything Buffy says. After our last fight, after Buffy proved she was reckless with our lives, she and Dawn grew closer. I’m afraid that Buffy is putting Dawn’s life in unnecessary danger just to keep her away from us.”
Xander just nodded. “The last slayer Buffy had any contact with – who hasn’t already joined her little one-woman show that is – said that Dawn’s language upon finding out that we wanted her away from Buffy wasn’t repeatable. And that Buffy’s at finding out that we’d sent ‘one of your slayers to do your dirty work’ wasn’t much better.”
Giles sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. What had happened to his family? When had things changed so much? There was a time, not long ago, when Giles would have bet his life on Buffy. When he would have willingly closed his eyes and let her take care of things. Maybe. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he hadn’t been, only given voice to that thought. Maybe he should’ve been. Xander paused in his report, and Giles could sense something else he wanted to say.
“For what it’s worth,” Xander said slowly, “I think you did the right thing. I know Dawn has been really hard on you…you?” he shook his head. “On all of us, but considering the way things have been between Buffy and us since that whole Caleb-First-Hellmouth closing…” Xander trailed off, his right hand drifting to the patch covering his eye.
“I don’t think she’s ever trusted us,” he said softly. “Or forgotten what we did. But if we had let something happen to Dawn, I think that would’ve been the nail in the coffin between her and us. That’s was the one thing she would never forgive.”
“There’s one other thing,” Giles said softly. “And I think that was the beginning of the end. When she finds out now, it’s all over.”
In round about numbers, there were roughly 4500 newly made Slayers after the Hellmouth incident.
Faith watched as another one died. Another one. That made seventeen this week alone. She couldn’t keep up, couldn’t stop the masses that were overflowing onto their world. Not her world, the world she lived in always involved demons, of one form or another. In this world. This world where evil was a human concept, intangible until it touched you directly.
Grasping the sword tighter, she waited until Big and Ugly headed in her direction. Waited, waited, waited…and attacked. She wouldn’t and couldn’t fall. She’d promised Buffy. She’d promised Dawn. She’d promised Angel.
She’d vowed to avenge Robin’s death.
Massacre. They were being systematically massacred, and she didn’t’ know why. Wanted to contact Buffy, but couldn’t get in touch with her. According to Giles, she’d gone off on some crusade and hadn’t talked to any of them in weeks. According to Dawn, she was trying to avenge her own lover’s death.
Ducking the massive arm that Big and Ugly swung at her, Faith smiled. She had no idea why she suddenly felt the need to, maybe it was the fact that of all the people she’d known, of all the sob stories, the tragic love affairs, the broken endings, Buffy’s was probably the only one she ever expected to come out happily.
It’d taken her a while to accept that, and not until she’d confessed to Robin her sordid past, but she did. Robin…
“Bastard,” she growled at Big and Ugly, and plunged the sword into his chest. It didn’t come out the other side, he was just that big, but it did damage. Of course she knew this only because he/she/it grunted and fell to his knees.
“Score one for the good guys,” she grinned, sticky slim covering her. Eh, all part of the job. It was something she was used to now.
“Of course, that one is up against a gazillion.”
She went to call Buffy again. Mostly, they played phone-tag, but once in a great while, they managed to have a seven minute conversation. Faith had a feeling it was more important they speak now, than it had been in all the years since she was called.
Willow held Kennedy’s body in her arms, silent tears falling onto the dead slayer’s still face.
“How?” she whispered into the empty darkness.
Her trembling hands stroked Kennedy’s hair, her tears slipping down the girls’ cheeks as if her own. Willow pulled her more tightly against her, rocking softly. “How? How? Howhowhow?”
“It wasn’t that hard,” a voice answered.
Stunned, Willow whipped around to search the darkness, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t the scared teen of high school, but a strong witch who commanded powers unknown to all but a few ancients.
He stepped into the light, then, that strip of moonlight he’d so carefully and so artfully placed her lover, and Willow froze. “Angel?”
“Close, my darling little witch.” He looked down at her with that imperious, menacing stare that had frozen her in similar ways so very long ago. “But then you’re not that stupid, are you?”
“Angelus,” she breathed. Letting go of her darling lover, Willow stood, finally remembering who she was. Now. Who she was now, and that she could kick this lowly vampire’s ass from here to hell and back. Or simply leave him in hell. Again.
“Correct on the second try, but then you always were second best, weren’t you, darling Willow?”
He didn’t move, she was certain of that, and yet suddenly he had her by the throat. Not hard enough to bruise, never that, but it effectively immobilized her. And made the uttering of spells impossible.
Xander found her. Kennedy’s body lay dead at her dangling feet as Willow swung lazily from the ceiling.
“Suicide?” Xander muttered.
Gently, he removed her from the ceiling, silent tears falling unnoticed. Repeating her name like a prayer, he held her body close, rocking back and forth. Giles found them both like that, Xander all but comatose, holding Willow’s blindly staring body. He refused to let her go, even after he recognized Giles and remembered, with horrible clarity, what happened.
“She was murdered,” he insisted, though Giles’ look said it all. “She was murdered.”
And then came the anger. The blinding hatred anger at his oldest and dearest friend. “How dare she!” he raged, unaware that Giles was there, the only one there to see his complete and total breakdown. “How dare she take the easy way out! Why couldn’t she have raged like she did when Tara was murdered! Why did she have to kill herself? Why? Whywhywhywhy?”
It was the last time he spoke of Willow.
“So what do we know?” Xander demanded. “What’s doing this?”
Giles took off his glasses, rubbing tired eyes
with a weariness Xander hadn’t ever seen. Looking back at his charge, his
friend, his fellow warrior, Giles shook his head.
“I’ve heard rumors,” he admitted. “Angel isn’t dead.”
Xander started at that, a myriad of emotions racing across his face in the space of a moment, only to settle on indifference. “Yeah? So? Does anyone really care?”
Buffy would, but neither said that.
“He isn’t Angel,” Giles said slowly. “Xander, he’s Angelus.”
“I heard a rumor,” Buffy’s voice came clearly over the phone.
“Not from you, mind you,” she continued and Giles flinched. “But I heard this fascinating rumor about the return of Scourge of Europe.” Her laugh was harsh. “I heard about the slayers he’s turned. About Willow’s death – not from you, again, but I heard all the same. Did you think I wouldn’t? And now Xander’s MIA?”
Giles was silent for a long minute, and was vaguely surprised when she did nothing to fill the silence. Standing, he turned to the window, watching the predawn hours, the deceptive silence of below.
“Where’s Faith?” Buffy finally demanded.
“She heard that rumor, too,” Giles admitted. “She’s taking the remaining slayers against Angelus.”
“They’re going to fail,” she said with conviction. “This isn’t the same Angelus she thinks she knows. This isn’t the same one you think you do.”
Silence again.
“Don’t worry, Giles.” Her voice was bitter now, bitter and resigned. And disappointed, terribly disappointed. Not in the situation. In him. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Buffy.”
She hadn’t hung up, but said nothing to acknowledge him. “Will you be back?”
“No.” And she hung up.
Xander joined Faith and her slayers. Together they died. Together, they rose again. And Angelus laughed, the irony of it clear to him, but he wondered if either of them realized it.
Angelus tore them apart. Buffy wasn’t far behind, he knew that even if Giles and Xander refused to believe she actually wouldn’t leave them alone. But then eighteen months was a long time, and even with past friendships, with past loyalty, they didn’t believe. Their mistake.
One he wasn’t going to make, because he knew his darling all too well.
The moment he arrived back on this plane from wherever he’d been, Buffy had known he was back. They were all fools if they didn’t believe that.
“I want something suitable for her arrival,” he told Faith who struggled against her binds. He wandered around the feisty slayer, hands absently caressing here and there, never realizing it. “Something special she won’t be expecting. Your dead body is so clichéd,” he sighed.
Then grinned at her. “Unless, of course, your undead body meets her. Hmm, probably still clichéd, but I know my darling love too well.” He leaned in, whispering to Faith. “And this’ll be perfect.”
He sent them to LA, where Buffy still fought. It was a losing battle, and he knew she knew that, but she fought anyway. Fought until exhaustion, then collapsed into sleep that haunted her as much as the waking realization that Angelus was back and killing everyone and everything, and still, still after all this time, after her.
In sleep, she dreamt.
His hands were cool, gentle along her breasts, nails just scraping her nipples. She gasped, arched into him. More. She needed more. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t blind to anything. She knew who made love to her, she knew who held her in his strong arms, naked body pressed close.
Buffy knew and didn’t care.
“Angelus,” she breathed, rolling her hips against his.
“Yes, my love,” he whispered along her skin. Cool breath on hot skin, teeth scraping skin sensitive with need. Need from him.
“Please,” she begged, forcing heavy eyes open to watch him. She didn't want to beg, needed to, needed him.
His smile was wolfish, flashing in the darkness of the room. Buffy wasn’t sure where they were, only knew she was with him. And that was all that mattered.
His mouth lowered to her breasts, tongue lapping, teeth nipping. Finally, they bit down and her hips jerked forward, seeking him. His low chuckle vibrated along her skin, tingling. Her hands glided down his body, taut with muscle, with his own need. Cupping his cock, she stroked, teased.
Two could play his game.
Then he entered her, and she cried out his name, moving slowly against him, deeper, harder, winding arms and legs and hair around him until it was impossible to tell where one ended and one began.
“Angelus!” she cried, climaxing hard, still moving against him.
Felt his growl on her neck, felt his teeth sink into her, felt another rush of blinding pleasure.
“Sleep, my love,” he whispered against her hair, arm tight around her. Legs tangled, body cool and hard behind her.
Angelus watched from the shadows. It wasn’t hiding, so much as reveling in his victory.
It almost didn’t matter now, almost. His darling lover was as isolated now as she had been before Willow’s, ah, untimely, death. His latest present to his love was on their way even as he watched. A surge of anger gripped him as he thought of the other presents he’d offered, but she didn’t acknowledge. The ones he sent to her, the slayers he’d turned, the world he ruled.
But then, even now, she wasn’t aware of much outside what her once-precious Giles told her. She’d grown, adapted, but still didn’t realized it all. He’d change that.
“You’re stalling,” Voice #3 hissed.
Turning his head lazily, he offered the nearly invisible shadow a sneer. “You know nothing,” he sighed, immediately returning his attention to Buffy. “She’s the only one worthy of my attention,” he said. “She’s the only one worthy of truly understanding what I’ve done and will do. And she will be by my side.”
“And our deal?” the voice demanded.
“Is still intact,” he shrugged, indolently. “I’m ridding the world of those pesky slayers, aren’t I?”
With that, he pushed off the wall and silently tracked his darling through the streets she continued to battle on. Sometimes others joined her, helping her root out the demons that seemed to overrun the world. Other times, less frequently, she was alone.
But she was always his.
Would have-should have-could have. I did that a lot when Angel lost his soul. I did it again when he left me. I lost count of how often I did it when I didn’t kill Spike even with everyone wanting me to. Now here I am again.
Fucking Déjà vu.
I was in the middle of a fight with some way-aggressive über-ugly demon somethings when I got the news Giles was dead. The few remaining Slayers – few out of thousands – were running across Europe for their lives. Could I have saved them had I stayed? Which was more important: stopping this (Angelus just say it, just admit it, just…say…his…name!) or staying in Italy and protecting them? Second guessing myself was a hobby where Angel (Angelus. Angel. Soul. Demon. Damn.) was concerned, why change now?
Fuck.
As deeply as I mourned for Giles, for Willow, how much I worried about Xander, hoped and prayed for Dawn and Connor, tried to contact Faith and mourned for her death, too, I had to think that Giles felt Angel was the higher priority or he wouldn't have sent Faith and a mere handful of slayers after Angelus. And what a damned stupid mistake that was! I mean really – Faith and a dozen or so slayers against Angelus? Who was he trying to fool? Faith? That she actually could take him? Or himself?
Probably both. Giles was good at that. Fooling everyone. Himself, Willow and Xander (don’t cry!), sometimes me (Lie to me…) but mostly himself. He tried, but I think after a while, the trying got old and he gave up with even the pretense of it. One of the many reasons we didn’t get along after Acathla’s aborted rising.
Back to my dilemma. So knowing how certain that outcome would be (the Angelus outcome of course), I do what I always do. I fight until I can’t. It seems inevitable, does it not? I always face the demonic version of the man I love.
My pain seems like some twisted Hallmark card; it just keeps on coming.
It took longer for the message to reach her than anticipated. There was some miscommunication, and some of the slayers who were left alive, purposely, to deliver this very special message weren’t entirely certain who she was.
Angelus was incensed. Stupid slayers and their myopic world. They didn’t even know who the best of them was? How was that even possible? Resisting the need to bang his head against the wall for dramatic effect, Angelus made himself wait.
Oh, he wanted to tell her himself, but really, this was better. She could take her anger out on those stupid slayers, first, leaving him to pick up the pieces afterwards.
By the time one of the few remaining slayers found her, she was back in what was once LA, fighting a pack of demons.
“We’re dying out there!” the slayer had screamed. “What are you doing here that’s so important?”
“Saving what’s left of the world,” his lover had spat at the girl. She was obviously scared – the slayer, not his woman – and taking it out on the one person she felt she could.
“If you’re going to wine instead of help,” Buffy snarled, but he could see it. The pain at the slayer’s news. The grief she automatically hid, the tears that wanted to fall. “Then leave. If not, kill that thing behind you.”
Angelus surveyed his prisoners. Or were they his family? Family was to be protected at all costs, and yet the only reason he had for protecting those before him was for Buffy. She wanted them alive, why else send her sister and his devil spawn away from an imminent apocalypse?
So here he was, sheltering them in an opulent suite three levels below his own penthouse. Prisoners, yes of course, but ones in gilded cages.
Damn. The things I do for love…well, for Buffy.
“Dawn, dear, do stop sniffling,” he said in a smooth, soft voice that made her stiffen. Okay, so that voice wasn’t actually meant to soothe so much as instill unbridled terror. He grinned – and that terrified Dawn even more. Excellent. Nice to know it still worked. “I’m not going to kill you, as I’ve said at least a dozen times.”
“And why,” Connor demanded, “aren’t you? You’re a monster, it’s what you do. Isn’t that what you always told me? That you kill, rape, pillage your way through town after town. ”
Angelus sighed. “Right. Sure. What I do. I’m not a damned pirate, boy. I do what I please, child,” he snapped. “And I do it when I please. Right now, it pleases me to keep you alive.”
“For how long?” Connor sneered.
“For as long as I feel like it.”
“No,” Dawn said wiping her eyes and sniffing rather disgustingly. Angelus produced a handkerchief and handed it to her with a scowl of disgust. She took it and blew her nose, drawing herself up from the bed she’d woken on, ignoring the lushly decorated room and walked a step towards him. She couldn’t take him, and knew that better than anyone.
Connor had already tried, and now sported the bruises and cuts – and broken arm – to prove he couldn’t win against his father. The fact that Angelus now had powers the Senior Partners showered him with was nearly beside the point. Those particular powers didn’t necessarily make him stronger, faster, better (not that he wasn’t already the best), so much as enhance.
Eh, so he didn’t understand them either. He didn’t care.
“You’re going to keep us alive,” Dawn continued after wiping her nose, “because you want Buffy. You’re going to use us as bait to draw her here so you can hurt her. Kil-” her voice caught. “Kill her.
“Perceptive girl,” he nodded, impressed. “I’m surprised you could see past your own miserable life long enough to realize that. You are, however, wrong.”
Dawn glared at him, standing taller now, almost regal in her red-eyed, snotty mess. Angelus was impressed, or nearly so. She did look like Buffy just then.
“I know my sister. I know she’d do anything to keep me,” she glanced at Connor and nodded at him, “and Connor safe. It’s who she is. And you,” she spat, “are going to take excellent advantage of it, aren’t you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Of course! She’s my mate, little one,” Angelus smiled at both Dawn’s and Connor’s expressions, the look of disbelief, disgust, confusion…and just a little awe. It was good to be king. “She’s mine and I will do anything for her.” Dawn, who had opened her mouth to say something, snapped it closed at that.
“Yes, you fool,” he snarled. “Anything. Ask yourself why that is. Ask yourself why you’re still alive if what I wanted was to hurt Buffy. She’s mine. My mate, my lover. Think on it. And then,” he pushed away from the wall and walked out of the room. His voice floated behind him, “You’ll begin to understand what we have. Until then, you’d do well to keep your mouth closed. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Long time, B.”
The voice floated through the darkness and surrounded Buffy. Not with the sense of home she’d come to associate with her sister slayer, the one slayer she considered such. But with dread. Terror. Not for herself, but for what Angelus wreaked.
Oh, God, please help me.
“I’m not sure she remembers you.”
Another voice. Hard, vicious. So very familiar even if it had been months since she’d least heard it. Xander.
“Let me guess,” she said in a light voice, pushing every single bit of betrayal and hurt down as far as she could. God, it hurt. She’d killed so many she’d considered friends, through her own sword or through absence. She couldn’t kill the two before her, too. She was going to.
She’d find the Fates and kill them, later…
“Angelus thought the best part about turning you was the look on my face when I realized that,” here her voice changed to a shocked little girl’s. “Oh, my! My friends are vampires. Whatever am I going to do?”
Buffy snorted, cursed herself for caring that demons now inhabited her friends’ bodies and that she was stalling when she should be fighting.
“Actually, B,” Faith sauntered into the dim pool of light the moon cast. “It went something along the lines of, ‘Kill her if you have to, but try to keep her alive for the fun of torture later’. Me,” she shrugged, that loose-limbed movement Buffy had once envied. “I like the torture part.”
“I just bet you do,” Buffy murmured then cocked her head to the side. “However, you’re wrong. One, Angelus would never tell you that. Two, it’d take more than the two of you to do it, and he knows that. And three…” she grinned, hard, mean, covering every feeling she still had inside her. “Three, Angelus never wanted me dead.”
“You so sure about that, Buffy?” Xander asked with a sneer as he joined Faith. The street seemed darker now, emptier. Buffy wondered if the vampires currently surrounding her had anything to do with that or if it had been like this since the latest demon attacks. She couldn’t remember.
“I’m positive.”
Buffy had actually forgotten the question. Eh, so what. It was always good to sound confident in the face of adversity. She had things to fight. Fight until she couldn’t. Until she died. Or in this case, until Angelus had her. Or she finally met him in battle. Or she killed herself with these wandering thoughts.
Sheesh!
“Happy Halloween,” Faith said just before she leapt the distance between she and Buffy.
“Oh, yippee,” Buffy smiled as she used Faith’s momentum to throw her into a building. “Did you bring candy?”
“I did,” Xander said, grabbing her arms from behind. “Or maybe you’re my candy.”
“Ugh, please! You used to have much better lines than that, Xander.” Her heart broke over that, tears gathered. She’d cry later. Standing over Xander’s ashes. Mourning his soul. Light a candle for him, Faith, Giles, Willow, all her Slayers…her sister and Angel’s son. Later. It was always later.
Fight until she died (again). Mourn them all later.
“Whatever happened to The Great Pumpkin?” Buffy swung her head back and knocked the back of her head into Xander’s nose. Really, the amount of times he’d seen her fight and he didn’t know that was coming? He so deserved that. “Whatever happened to chocolate and cookies?”
“How about a rock?” Xander snarled and wiped the blood from his nose. Served him right.
“Look, Charlie Brown,” yes, don’t look at him, not really. If I don’t look, I won’t know. It wasn’t Xander. It wasn’t Faith. Demons, only demons. God, WHY?
Fight until she couldn’t.
“This is fun and all, but I have a previous engagement. And I do so hate to be late.”
Xander was easy to take down. He’d learned to fight, true, and actually could anticipate some of her moves. But Buffy had many more he’d never seen. More than included taking on the whole of the First’s army, including the First itself. More that included killing the man she loved when she was only seventeen. More than included killing friends and potential lovers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and staked him. “Your soul is already free.”
His ashes dusted the ground before her, the last remnants of a dear friend. Buffy swore she heard his laugh. Not the sneering one of moments ago. Not the mocking of his demon. Not the forced one from their last year together and tension was the only thing holding them all together. The one from before. When they were still in high school and Xander was the jokester. When they could fight and win and party. When death hadn’t yet touched them all.
“Don’t get too cocky, B,” Faith snarled from behind her. Buffy didn't bother to turn and face her.
“I’m stronger than you, Faith,” she whispered, still staring at the ground and the ashes that covered such a small area. An entire body, fully grown, a man, a friend. How was it that took up so little room?
“You might have once been,” Faith scoffed, “at least in your own little mind. But things change.”
Buffy still didn’t look up. “Yes. Yes they do,” she agreed quietly. “They change to the point where I can do this. They change to the point where it won’t hurt nearly as much as it once would have. To the point where I know that your soul is already free and safe. That the sins you committed can no longer taint it.”
She did turn then, looking tired. The predator within her was eager, however, ready to pounce and win. Ready to fight and scratch and kill. Her eyes were hard slivers in the scant moonlight, unwavering on her prey.
“You can’t win, Faith. You never could.”
Faith’s ashes swirled and mixed with Xander’s, as a brief gust of wind whipped down the street, Buffy looked up and screamed.
Fading into the night, she was left with nothing but silence.
The darkness closed in around her, suffocating with its memories. Friend no more, never again, not since Angel…
The darkness closed in around her, suffocating with its needs. Needing to touch and taste her, wanting to envelope her in its arms.
The darkness closed in around her, suffocating with its wants. Wanting to take every last bit of her soul for itself.
Buffy wished Dawn was still here, Connor beside her. she needed them more now than ever before. Needed their presence to help keep that darkness at bay. Needed their support to finish what had begun.
But she was alone now, standing in the center of the room she’d claimed as hers. No one dared enter this sanctuary, too afraid of her to so much as step foot on the same floor. The building was rundown, now, abandoned in the fighting. Once moderate-income apartments, now it housed those who fought with the slayer. A slayer who was slowly losing whatever sanity she’d ever had.
They couldn’t know that, of course. Couldn’t know that once upon a time she’d been as sane as anyone. That she had hopes and dreams and knew what she wanted and how to get it and what was going to happen tomorrow.
Couldn’t know that once upon a time she had friends. Friends who fought with her, who partied with her, who helped her through love and loss and fear. Couldn’t know that those friends now lay dead, killed because of her, though, not because of the fight.
Buffy looked around the room with empty eyes, not really seeing the furnishings. Whatever the previous owners had left still decorated the area. She didn’t care. They were all dead, and she was alone. Her sister and his son were, hopefully, please God, let them be safe, long gone to Mexico and away from Angelus.
“Don’t cry, love.”
The words took a moment to register in her fogged mind. Jerking her head up, she looked straight at Angelus, standing perfectly still in front of her. His cool fingertips brushed her cheeks, catching her frozen tears, making her skin heat at his touch.
“Why?” she demanded. Her voice was low and harsh, no hint of her tears as she stared up at him.
“They were in the way,” he said softly, and now his hands slipped over her face and rhythmically rubbed her scalp.
Against her will, Buffy felt her body relax. It felt wonderful to finally do so, though her mind was in no way fooled. She was still as alert as ever, but, oh, how good this felt. He leaned down to kiss her then, firm lips on hers, coaxing her mouth open.
Kissing him back wasn’t the problem. The way her mind blanked while doing so was. Angelus had the uncanny ability to make every single thought seep from her mind, replaced with nothing but him. Angel had that ability, too, but it’d been so long since Buffy had even seen Angel, let alone touched him, that Angelus took over.
He walked her backwards, and some faint part of her knew they were heading for the bed. That same part wondered why he wasn’t taking her away, why he wasn’t kidnapping her now. Neither that part of her mind nor her heart, could answer that question.
Recklessly, she accepted him. Desperate to feel, to taste, she abandoned everything she knew just to feel. The cool skin under her fingertips, the play of muscle as he flexed above her. A gasp for air when his teeth, blunt and sure, closed over her nipple. A moan of need when his fingers teased her core.
A hum of pleasure when she flipped them over and tasted him, her lips closing around his cock. When she settled over him, teasing his cock with her wetness, Buffy rocked her hips against him, nails curling into his shoulders, purposely drawing blood. She watched her lover through half-closed eyes, and smiled. Triumph. Victory. Success.
Theirs wasn’t a gentle coupling. It was hard and rough. Scratching and biting, blood on the sheets, licked off her pale skin. Fingers bruising her hip, nails drawing his blood. Each battled for dominance, not satisfied until they were joined.
Only then was the battle won. Both victors in the never-ending war they fought with their feelings.
“Why?” she demanded again as she rode him.
“Because you would never come to me unless they weren’t in your way.” He said it as if he hadn’t destroyed the world she tried so desperately to protect. As if he hadn’t murdered her friends. As if he wasn’t responsible for her being alone in this new world.
“How?” she wanted to know, her breath catching as he moved up, surging deeper into her.
“Magick,” he muttered against her breasts, face shifting, fangs scraping the areole to draw a faint line of blood.
Angelus knew what she wanted to know. He knew so much about his darling lover, and yet he couldn’t understand why. Why she fought – his demons, him. Herself. Pride, yes, but she had nothing left to fight for. No friends, no family. She didn't know about Dawn and Connor, and he wasn’t planning on telling her until after he had her.
Rolling atop her, Angelus lifted one leg to his shoulder, pounding into her harder, now, faster. She clenched around him, her breathes panting against his shoulder, her fingers dinging into his arms, her hips meeting his as she urged him faster. Harder. More.
His.
She screamed his name as she climaxed, rigid underneath him. And he loved watching her, the emotions, the need. Her body told him so much more than she ever would. Oh, he was in no doubt that words of affection and love wouldn’t ever cross those beautiful lips of his lover.
He didn’t need them. Her body showed him everything he needed to know about her.
Thrusting once again into her pliant body, Angelus came with a roar of his own.
And the darkness that had once enveloped her and her lover before such a wrenching loss of innocence again wrapped them in its arms, leaving them nothing but the silence.
I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of losing.
Once upon a time I’d only lost one fight, the one where I sent my lover to hell because of a stupid curse that still doesn’t make any sense, and I’ve had years to think about it. Shame they were all killed, I’d have liked to know just what in hell they were thinking. Ah, well, at least they won’t be cursing anyone else with ridiculously juvenile curses. No, I have no pity for the Kalderash Clan. They deserved what they got.
I’m still tired, but then it’s my cycle. I live, I fight, I lose friends and allies, I die, only to do it all again. Reincarnation at its absolute worst. I think I fucked up the Karma bit for sure.
I want to lie down and sleep for a month. I want to stop fighting a losing battle. I want to have a nice little mental breakdown from which it’s virtually impossible to come back. I’d say I want to die, but we all know that’ll never happen. Fourth time’s the charm? Not in Buffy’s little world.
Plus I’m lonely. I mean I had all these friends and helpers for like years. Now they’re all dead, and I’m alone. All the slayers are gone, all the watchers. Most people who know what goes crash, bang, boom in the night are also gone – there are just too many boogiemen. I vaguely remember telling my friends, once upon an apocalypse, that Slayer meant One. That I didn’t need their help.
Eh, so maybe I was a teensy bit wrong. Oh, more often than not they were in the damn way, and I spent more time (in the beginning at least, when I cared) worrying about them than focusing on the fight. But it was nice to talk about things with them. To know that I could have backup if I wanted to.
Maybe Riley’s still alive down in the jungle.
Maybe I’m just really desperate now.
Happy Halloween, world.
I munch on my Snickers bar, though Halloween was weeks ago, and remember other Halloweens. When I was five and dressed up like Wonder Woman. Or when I was eleven and wanted to be a supermodel. Or that last one when I was fifteen, before this whole destiny thing came into play. We’d all dressed up at school, and I was Princess Di.
Now I look like Xena on a bad hair day. And like a foot shorter. Still, I have a way niftier sword. But she did have that deadly Frisbee thingy.
He’s still waiting.
Drinking the last of my last bottle of water, I wander to the window. It’s dark out, nearly pitch black. There’s no electricity, or not much. People have all but abandoned LA. Hell, I hear they’ve abandoned most of California. I wonder what the rest of the country is doing? The rest of the world?
Once upon a time I had slayers worldwide. Once upon a time, I had hope.
Now I just want it to end. But I can’t. I can’t stop fighting. It’s not in me, not who I am, not what I do. I fight until I die, then I rise from the dead and do it all over again. Oh, what a fun life. Thank you Fate for forgetting to cut my thread.
I’m running though the streets, and this one looks kinda familiar. But then I’ve been through this entire city hundreds of times over, and who can keep track of these things? God, I need a nap. I slip around the corner, quietly hiding my presence from the group of…five, no six. Wait, four? Either I need the services of a good optometrist, or that nap. Or the funky gray demons keep multiplying and subtracting at will.
I aim my crossbow carefully, going for the largest. With anyone else’s luck, the largest is the strongest. With my luck, it’s the baby.
Straight through the back of the skull. Buffy 1, Funky Gray Demons 0.
And now there are, ah, four? I replace my crossbow on my back and unsheathe my sword. Yeah, Boudica would be jealous. It doesn’t last long, this fight. I’ve spent plenty of time honing my skills, and dropping my puns. I miss those, but they’re a distraction.
Go in. Fight. Kill. No prisoners. No information. No need.
He’s watching me again. I can feel him gliding through the night like a ghost, all grace and insubstantialbility. I’m not even sure that’s a word.
He doesn’t stop me from fighting, nor does he actually help. Well, there was that once, but it was only that once. Course I had fallen from the fang that was lodged in my thigh, but, hey. It was something.
He comes to me every night, and I never deny him. When I’m in his arms I can forget and think that this is what every day is like, what every night can be. We rarely talk, but sometimes he tells me his plans. Not for world domination – I strongly suspect he’s already got that – but for us.
Us.
He always talks in that plural. Us. Him and me, Angelus and Buffy. Us.
It’s tempting.
He watched her look out the window and knew she was searching for him. Even as the shadows clung to him like a lover’s kiss, she found him. Always found him, knowing where he was just as he knew her every move. Eyes narrowing in on his corner, though he never stood in the same spot twice.
Sometimes he didn’t bother waiting for her to find him, simply entered her room, such as it was. Sometimes he couldn’t not watch her; vividly reminded of all the nights he’d done just that during his first reappearance in Sunnydale years ago.
The moon cast a faint glow on her window, closed and barred as it was against the night. He watched as she slowly opened it, her hands moving at an impossibly erotic pace, and he nearly laughed at the thought. But then everything she did turned him on. The window opened, she leaned out, and once more he was reminded of those times in Sunnydale.
Stepping from the shadows, he stood on the corner of the street opposite her window, watching, watching. Just as slowly as she’d opened the window, she smiled. A sexy pull of her lips, no less genuine for all that.
“I know you’re there, Angelus,” she whispered into the night. Her voice was honey, pure and seductive, calling to him. “Why do you watch from the street?”
“Because I can,” he replied, but didn’t know if she’d heard him or not.
Instead, he leapt straight up, snagging his fingers on the windowsill, and pulling himself (rather ungracefully though he’d never admit it) into her room. Blocking the faint light from outside with his frame, Angelus watched her watching him – he never wanted anything more in his life than he wanted her. Even that loser soul needed her more than blood. But then there was no point in going into that, what with all the intrinsic stupidity that the soul led to.
“Why?” she asked again.
Crossing the distance between them, he took her willing body into his arms, kissed her. He had no real response to her questions, or none she’d truly understand. He’d told her, with his body, with his mouth, with his hungering passion. Told her how he felt. Told her without words, for he wasn’t certain he could give voice to the tumultuous passions that crashed within him at the mere thought of her.
“Because it’s you,” he said eventually.
And kissed her again. Carried her to the bed, now covered in luxurious sheets, clean and fresh. Running water worked only in her apartment, only for her. Because everything he did was solely for her.
His mouth found her neck, the raised scar there he’d reopened numerous times over the past weeks. Not to feed off her, never that. To mark her. To taste the power in her. The love and passion and spicy magick of slayer.
Because it was her.
It was only her.
I dreamt about them last night. The old them, eager and caring, laughing our way through high school. Before Angelus. Before I had to make choices I never wanted to make. Before they didn’t understand. Before, before, before.
Or maybe it was a perfect world I dreamt, one where they did understand and accept. Where they did acknowledge my decisions. Where they were friends.
That’s not this world. This dead world I fight in. Dead. They are, too, and I know it’s because of me. Angelus. Me. Us. The us he refers to every night. Us.
I can’t help that I love that world, that I know he will always believe it. That he’ll always be there, with me, for me.
I can’t stay away from him any more than he can from me. I tried; I wanted to, I almost needed to just because we fought on opposite sides. No, because I fought against him. I tried to deny, I tried to be strong, I tried to stay away. It didn’t matter what he did, he is my weakness.
I didn’t want to stay away from him.
I need him like I do nothing else in this world. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if this hadn’t happened. But then I think he might not be with me in any form, for I’m fairly certain Angel died in that stupid fight against the Senior Partners’ lackeys.
Died fighting. Only to be reborn much like I was. Am. Only without his soul. He was reborn, and came back to me. For me. I won’t look back. I won’t care about the future. Or the past. Or what could’ve been. Because it doesn’t matter, and I can’t change any of that.
The Senior Partners, however…
Yes, the Senior Partners are something else entirely. I don’t know who they are, or what, but I do know one thing. They’re responsible for Angelus’ resurrection.
I wonder what Dawn and Connor are doing, how they’re doing. Safe, please let them be safe in this new world where I couldn’t protect them and fight, too. Safe from the things that want me dead. Safe from whatever Angelus has in mind.
I need them to be safe.
I don’t think anyone’s listening to my pleas, my prayers, but if You are, please let them be safe. It wouldn’t be the first time no one listened.
“Do you love me?” she demanded.
His arm tightened around her, but other than that Angelus showed no signs of his answer. They were lying in her bed (their bed), thoroughly spent and utterly sated from the previous hours’ activities.
Buffy was, without a doubt, the best fuck he’d ever had. She was energetic, experimental, uninhibited. His. Her blood raced through his dormant body, energizing him the same way her scent brought his lungs to life, her kisses made his lips tingle. Her smile warmed him.
But did he love her?
“You don’t have to say it,” she said and didn’t move, and he wondered about that. Buffy not move out of his arms after him not answering a question as significant as that one? Angelus’ arm tightened further around her – the thought that she didn’t love him had him growling against her recently reopened mark.
“I know you do.” She did shift now, rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sometimes,” she sighed, voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear her. “Sometimes it’s just nice to hear the words.”
Grabbing her around the waist, Angelus hauled her backwards, dragging her across his lap. His hands tangled in her hair, holding her still as his mouth ravaged hers. Took and took, tasted her spicy secrets, branded her, captured her.
“Do you want me to say it?” he demanded.
“If you can’t, then no,” Buffy whispered. “If you don’t, then…no. You’d kill for me, die for me, hell, you’d probably starve for me if you had to.” She offered a slight smile. “I know how you feel about me.”
Angelus laughed, but didn’t contradict her. He would. He’d do anything for her. His hands combed through her hair, gentle on the tangles as he smoothed them out. Laying her back on the bed, he continued his gentle caresses along her shoulders, tracing her collarbone with one long finger, scraping her nipple with his nail.
“And you, my love? Would you do the same for me?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
Lowering his head, Angelus kissed her slowly, his hands still caressing her. “I do, you know,” he whispered against her mark.
“I know.”
This was the end.
He was tired of playing games, tired of not having her all the time. Tired of her fighting, not him, never him, not directly at least. She never denied him, always the willing and eager lover. However, she wouldn’t leave with him, either.
She was harder now, not so much the bleeding heart as she’d been. Her friends were gone, and for reasons he’d never ask her, Buffy didn’t blame him. Oh, she had to know he’d been the one to kill them all, but she never blamed him. If she had, Angelus knew she’d never have entered his bed.
But there were still two things in this world she cared for. Well, two things besides him. And Angelus knew she cared for him, loved him, wanted and needed him. It was those other two things he had to deal with. Keeping them locked in a gilded cage and safe had seemed best for a while there, but now…now he wasn’t so certain.
They were only in the way.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, head on his shoulder. She sounded drowsy, and he hated that. She spent too much energy on fighting things she couldn’t hope to win against. Not any more, not alone.
“To see the end,” he said and wondered where such a stupid line like that had come from. Shifting her against him so he could see her eyes, he added, “You know you can’t win, lover.”
Buffy winced, but remained quiet. That told him volumes more than he’d ever imagined. She knew she wouldn’t win and that all her fighting couldn’t change that. So why did she? Because it was what she knew? Was it some sort of bizarre tribute to her past, her friends…that pathetic soul that should, by rights though it probably wasn’t, be burning in hell?
“I fight,” she said slowly, eyes hard and glittering though she remained straddled over him, fully clothed. The darkened limousine continued its path along the moonless road. “Because I have to. Because I’m not fighting against you, I’m fighting against the Senior Partners that brought you back. It’s them I fight.”
Her hand combed through his hair, longer now than when they’d last met. Her eyes never left his, though she made no move to intensify their contact. “The World as I know it is over. Continuing to fight what I must won’t change it. Nothing will change that.” She sighed, her voice dropping though her eyes did not.
“I know that no one outright challenges me because I’m with you. I know that you don’t interfere with my fight because…” she let out a breath of laughter. “I don’t really know, actually. But I do know that you don’t interfere because you think this is something I need.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked, motioning to the world outside their limo. “Is this not what you need? A purpose, a mission to fulfill? Something to fight, to say to your inner slayer that you did?”
She didn’t answer him, didn’t need to. Yes, she did need to fight. Yes, the slayer-power within called out for her to do so. To fight. To win. To beat down her enemies with viciousness and victory. To mate with the vampire before her. Under her.
She didn’t answer him. No, she most definitely did not need to. He knew. Just as she did.
“And the Senior Partners?”
“Only want a world ruled by evil,” he said. “It’s part of our agreement.”
“So where are we going?” Buffy asks instead. Subject dropped. Closed. Locked behind truths that could never be spoken.
“The Canadian boarder.”
He didn’t let her out of the car. Insisted that she stay behind closed doors, tinted windows; watch the outside world as events evolved around her. His events; the ones he’d made happen. The ones he wanted to happen and found a way to do so. Because he could, and that was enough for him. For her. Always for her. Was it? Probably, yes.
Because she was tired. Barely twenty-three and already so tired of fighting and dying and losing and wining and everything and anything in between of those extremes. Because she was in love. With the monster who’d done this. Because she missed the soul that worshiped her and made love to the demon who changed a world for her.
Buffy never expected this. What she’d been expecting when Angelus carried her to the waiting limo, she didn’t know. A night out? Improbable, but one just never knew with Angelus. It wasn’t this.
She knew he’d do everything to ensure her happiness, short of bringing (deceivers) friends back from the death he’d bestowed upon them. Short of reverting the (damaged destroyed dead) world back to its former human glory. Short of letting her live out happy fantasies of friendship and love and light. Darkness.
“Get out,” Angelus ordered to whomever was in a second car Buffy hadn’t seen before they’d stopped. One window was rolled down, the driver’s side and the equally tinted glass separating driver from passengers. The street was brightly lighted in the near-distance, the border still opened to anyone daring to cross Angelus and escape. It was as heavily guarded as top secrets used to be.
Dawn and Connor stepped out of the car. Buffy’s heart stopped, though she told herself later she should’ve seen this coming. It was so obvious. So typical. So…so very Angelus.
“If you’re smart,” Angelus said, looking at them but speaking, Buffy knew, to her. “You’ll cross that border and keep going. Don’t return. Don’t look back. As it stands now, I don’t need you two alive. I certainly never wanted you as such.”
“Is she okay?” Dawn demands and Buffy thought it a foolish and dangerous question even as her heart warmed. She really did love her sister.
Angelus paused, shot Dawn a look that was part anger, part irritation. Part acceptance. “Of course she is,” he answered eventually. “You know I’d never let anything bad happen to her.”
“Just checking,” Dawn shrugged, and Buffy wondered, with a stupid smile and equally stupid tears of love and affection, if she’d always been this protective of her, or if this new world they found themselves in brought out Dawn’s sisterly side.
And decided she didn’t care.
“Despite what you’ve heard or been told, little girl” Angelus continued, “you are not Buffy. Nothing so pathetic could come from my baby. And you,” his eyes flicked over Connor in dismissal. “Like her,” a glance at Dawn, “are just another magickal head-fuck those useless Powers That Be puked up to jerk our chains once more. You’re in my way, and yet killing you would only hurt her further.”
There really was no reason to say who that ‘her’ was.
“What to do,” he sighed, “what to do. Normally,” his voice perked right up, “I’d go with what’s worked for me for centuries. However, been there, done that, it just doesn’t work as I’d hoped, and repeating myself is ever so mundane.”
That was, Buffy realized, as close to a confession as he’d likely get. With words. With actions, he spoke his feelings to her every single day.
“Here we are, boys and girls, seemingly at an impasse. So think of this as my gift to Buffy. Ah, ah, ahhh,” he said to Dawn when she opened her mouth again. “Don’t think, don’t even speak. Neither are your strong points. This,” he continued with barely a pause, “will be your gifts to Buffy.”
He nodded towards the lights. “You see, kiddies, you’re going to either piss me off, and I kill you despite my best attempts at controlling my temper. Or you’re going to get her killed because she's trying to protect you. And then, children, I will gut you and put your heads on pikes for the world to see what happens to those that piss me off. All this before she’s even breathed her last.”
Clapping his hands together, Angelus grinned. “Now, before our relationship ends on a sour note, run and keep running. Don’t let me see your faces again. On the day you do…you die.”
They hesitated and another swell of love and pride welled within Buffy. But it was foolhardy to refuse Angelus’ offer. He ruled the world. Or soon would – eventually she’d have to figure out just what was happening but that task wasn’t for today.
Buffy made up her mind and opened the car door, slamming it to catch their attention. Dawn watched her for a long moment, and in that instant, when their eyes met, both sisters knew. This was where their paths diverged. It was where Dawn lived as Buffy wanted her to. Freely And Buffy accepted her lover back in her arms.
Dawn turned to Connor, held his gaze for a long moment. He offered his hand to her, and without glancing back at Buffy, they raced for the border. Buffy would see to it that they received supplies and whatever currency was currently in use. They were safe now, and would be. She’d see to that. As would Angelus.
Buffy walked to where Angelus stood, watching her sister and his son raced towards freedom. Angelus hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she stepped out of the car.
“Why?”
“Because you wanted them safe,” he said in a low voice that tingled along her spine, wakened her in ways she never knew before him.
Buffy raised an eyebrow at his statement and waited.
“Okay,” he conceded. “So I don’t intend to share you. Ever. This way, I won’t have to.” He smiled at her then, waiting until she took his hand, eyes lingering on the road ahead.
~~~~~~~~~~
They’re still safe. It’s been years, but I know Angelus – who would bow before another before admitting this – makes sure they are. For me. They’re all I have left of my past, of my family, but they’re everything I hope for in the future. A future I embrace with each passing day.
So no, I won’t look at what yesterday was, for today is all we have. And I won’t care that he’s not the soul that loved me, because he’s the demon who does. And I won’t care about the what ifs that plague me less and less during the day. Because I have him – all day, all night. Every day and night.
In the end, that’s really what matters.