One heart-weary demon will stumble on his evil path and will join the fractured light through battle. Together they will banish Sorrow, forging together a new house of power as the first and last wall of Aurelius crumbles to dust. Together they will stand against the evils of the earth, bound in protection and love and no man or vampire will be able to sever the bond. The King and Queen shall reign until all their daughters and sons lose breath and fade from the earth, and then all will be ever peaceful.
Giles slammed the heavy, aged book closed and muttered an improper British curse under his breath. Standing quickly, he paced in agitation, whipping off his glasses and consigning them to the peculiar habit that, more than anything else, helped him think. His feet were cold, not having been in the right frame of mind to retrieve his slippers after his impromptu visitor had put the fear of God into him. Ferocious banging on his door in the middle of the night often heralded an injured Buffy, and Giles had never quite reached the point where he’d been able to cut off his feelings and tend to her with a sense that one day, she wouldn’t even make it to his door to knock. Depending on the particulars of what he was sending her off to fight, he wasn’t even able to court ignorance and oblivion through sleep in case she would need him.
This night…had been a surprise.
He’d slept peacefully for the first time this week; having allowed Buffy the night off from patrol, it enabled him to breathe deeply and accept the lure of unconsciousness. It was more than pleasing to fall into that state from regular exhaustion rather than the usual effort of having his head in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He’d seriously never expected to see Spike again. Once the vampire had up and left Sunnydale the previous year, Giles would never have believed he’d return, though it was stupid of him to think that. Not when the Hellmouth still held the Slayer. Not when Spike hadn’t bested her, as was his reputation to do so. Buffy would have represented a challenge to the master vampire and he’d obviously come back to see to it. This rubbish about his supposed involvement with a prophecy was just his melodramatic way of announcing his presence. While seeing Spike had done nothing for his blood pressure, Giles exhaled a breath of relief.
But it still didn’t relieve his sense of responsibility in case Buffy was the victim of yet another prophecy. And if what he’d just read was true…
Despite extensive training at the academy to become a watcher, Giles had always thought the rigorous teaching on prophecies to be more than a little unhinged. Until he’d read the one foretelling Buffy’s end, he’d not believed a word of them. Until that moment, he’d not expected something so obscure and obviously unpredictable to matter. Until that moment when he was terrified of losing his daughter.
The beginning of this second prophecy was frighteningly clear to him now, but even so, he didn’t have the foresight or the power to know for certain what exactly it implicated. His original perusal had had him tucking it out of sight with a firm belief that it did not apply to Buffy. On the very rare chance it had crossed his mind since, he’d assumed Angel was the second factor. But now…he was uncertain. Yet intrigued. He still very much doubted it had the remotest to do with the hideously blond vampire, but to be sure, he should speak with Angel.
A yawn escaped him and Giles accepted that he couldn’t manage to make sense of the nonsensical while he was three parts sleep deprived. Standing and rubbing his aching eyes, he left the book on the table and wandered back upstairs and fell face first into his pillow. He’d tell Buffy in the morning about Spike’s strange arrival and he’d do more research then too.
As soon as he was awake.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
His body swung fluidly into the final pose and Angel grimaced in relief as he wound up the hour long session of Tai Chi. Once, he could use the session to blind out everything that caused him mental or emotional torment: Buffy. Tonight, every attempt to clear his mind had been jarred by the vividness of his imagination. She was everywhere he looked and everywhere he didn’t. He could smell her, feel her and his mouth salivated for the desire to taste her.
Every second of his movements seemed fraught with danger and Angel felt more exhausted than relaxed from his nightly routine. It was a true reflection of his current existence. Being back from the hellish beyond had been less reassuring and positive than he would have hoped. Being able to walk beside Buffy, patrol with her, look at her was teetering along the edges of the fiery place he’d only just escaped from. Just remaining in Sunnydale felt so difficult—too difficult—and, not for the first time, Angel wondered why he stayed. Why he tortured himself with the one thing he wanted more than the world itself—and the one thing he was cursed never to have.
The night felt odd. Angel looked around suspiciously and wished that his senses were back to being one hundred percent. It was a slow process for him to return to how he was—before love had destroyed his soul and renewed Angelus’s hold in the world. He couldn’t blame the wounded part of him from trying to reject being a vampire. It had been so difficult even for him to feed, and only reluctance to be visibly struggling and thus receiving the vicious end of Buffy’s tongue kept him drinking down the cold animal blood. His demon—and yes, he could feel it, wiggling furiously against the chains of the reinstated soul—rejected violently to the return of such a diet, but Angel had no choice. He’d tasted too many people whom Buffy had known—and more often than not, had drained them dry.
As dull as his abilities might be, he could still tell that there was something out there. Something beyond his mansion walls that seemed sinister and dark. And yet, he didn’t feel like it was menacing—rather, just observant—and not being in the mood to fight, Angel relied on that judgment and went to his fridge. It wasn’t like his predicament was a secret in this town. Even the lowliest of low creatures around knew what he was—and what he wasn’t. Knew the sorry history of his life for the past year and how he’d returned from the depths of a hell that the majority of them could never imagine. If there was something out there stalking him, let them. Nothing they could throw at him could be any worse that what he’d already been through. Than what he was currently going through.
Unless they were after Buffy.
The thought stopped him cold, making his stomach roil in fear. Not that Buffy probably couldn’t handle it. She’d handled him and he’d been pretty awful. Well okay, so that was down playing it just a bit. He’d been paired up with Drusilla, and together—as half of the Scourge of Europe—they’d broken enough bodies and tore enough lives apart to be much more than awful. Buffy could handle it, whatever it was. Buffy could handle anything; of this Angel was certain.
Shuffling forward slowly, Angel felt like he was fighting against something too thick to get to his blood. Something he couldn’t see and couldn’t feel; it reminded him of the sensation of a glucose field and it made him sleepy. He clenched his jaw and defied anyone to try and knock him out. Blood would give him added energy and he pushed on, grabbing the jar off the top shelf of his fridge and drank it down fast. Sensing the danger more clearly, his eyes flashed amber before he pivoted to the window, snarling at the shadow that slunk quickly out of sight. He took an urgent step toward it and fell, stumbling over his lazy feet as the energy drained fast out of him and his chin cracked against the hard floor. Pain burst behind his eyes and he moaned against the tide of sleepiness that argued with his need to stay awake. The last thing he caught sight of before his eyes drooped closed was long brunette curls, and he thought they looked beautiful.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
He heard words, whispered words that rhymed, cast with cackled humour and called about a promise of visions he didn’t want to see.
He walked. It was a world harsh and superior, judgmental of the being he was and couldn’t change. He was one of a diminishing few, the plague of Sorrow—his fellow beings that had walked aplenty upon the earth—having been dusted and eradicated almost into non-existence.
He felt fear. This was not the kind of world Angelus could walk around in with his cocky swagger, with his taste for fresh blood taken at any impulse. This was a world where the likes of him hid, and fed in quiet. Fed upon those who weren’t missed so he had time to move on and hide his tracks.
He was thrown deeper into the picture until his eyes fell upon a girl. She glowed, all golden and righteous as she quipped with her stake, doing good for the world while her lover fought by her side. Their moves were not orchestrated, rather came naturally to them, and they complimented each other in a way that Angel could never have hoped to. He’d not fought at her side nearly enough and had not truly studied her like he perhaps should have.
The enemy gone, he was left with watching the fire in her eyes and the intent that burned brightly between the two warriors as they launched themselves at each other. Clothing was frantically torn as they rushed to become naked and join in brutal, passionate force and Angel winced as Buffy lowered herself onto a standing, strong Spike, his cock jutting up tall and proud for her to force into her body with a strangled cry of pleasure. She bounced and rocked and Spike’s eyes rolled back. Hands gripped her hips and then teeth grazed her nipples—first one and then the other. The action slowed and Angel could see every torturing roll of her hips as she squeezed Spike’s cock tight, vaguely felt himself when his childe gasped and tried to jerk back up inside her, howling when the pulse of her muscles wouldn’t allow it. It was a beautiful sight, raw, animalistic yet driven with the power of both of them. He heard their screams, saw the second Spike came and jetted his come inside her, and Angel was inconsolably jealous.
They faded from his sight and he found himself standing in front of a mirror beside Drusilla and Spike. It bothered him that they had a reflection, but it didn’t stop him from looking his fill. Seeing how his family could look different in the glaze of glass. They smiled at each other, but then the pinch of heat at his hands switched his focus and Angel looked in the mirror to find himself and Dru aflame. The fire spread and scorched their flesh, making them scream in agony as Spike continued peering into the mirror untouched, his skin perfect and blemish free.
When the pain had reached its pinnacle, Angel could take no more and watched in fascinated horror as his existence crumbled before him. He watched himself disappear until his eyes were the last, and with one final betrayed glare at Spike, he was gone.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
He awoke with his face in a puddle of blood. The blood that he’d consumed earlier, that had touched his throat as he’d swallowed it down. His body was still fighting against a fake blaze and despite the absence of any blistering, he hurt like a son of a bitch.
Angel pushed himself to his knees, and then lurched unsteadily to his feet. His head was pounding and his body felt limp, like he couldn’t stand straight and couldn’t acclimatise to the shifted surroundings.
Slowly it came to him what he’d seen and he shuddered, the memory of Buffy impaling herself on Spike just a little too clear. And then the end of his existence, burning to dust reflected in the mirror while Spike stood unscathed—not only unjust, but entirely too reprehensible to give credit. And yet his body still suffered from sharp tingles that reminded him of the pain of being gone from this world.
He was confused, wounded—mentally, if not apparently physically—and he was exhausted. While he was positive that he’d just suffered at the hands of someone’s seriously twisted humour and misguided magic, Angel refused to dwell on it tonight. That Buffy would ever fuck Spike—of all evil soulless vampires—was just so funny he needed time to go and laugh it up before he wept.
Turning in for the night—even if it was still relatively early for the sun-challenged—seemed like the safest option. Angel headed slowly to his room and fell upon his bed, trying his best to hold in the screams of pain that pressure of the fall wanted him to howl loudly to the world. Desperately ignoring it, he called upon Morpheus to put him out of his misery.
As his lids closed voluntarily, the shadow on the exterior of his home stepped out into the moonlight and away from the window. Drusilla giggled as she licked her bloodied fingers, looking up into the sky with an unhinged stare of promise as the spots of crimson speckled her thin lips.
“Soon, my Angel. Soon.”