TITLE: The Last Cut Is the Deepest 1/13
SERIES: Scratch – always.basiamille.com/fanfic/scratch/
AUTHOR: Ducks, Born Again Angel Ho
EMAIL: ducksfanfic@y...
DISCLAIMER: Did you forget to take your meds?
RATING: NC-17 for language and sexual content
PAIRING: B/A
TIMELINE: Two years after "
SPOILERS: Entire B/A saga is fair game, up to and
including Season 7/4.
SUMMARY: B/A are back together, determined to give their
relationship another shot. Naturally, it’s not that simple. Just as things
start to come together (literally *g*), an old "friend" returns to
throw a monkey wrench into the works. Buffy and Angel are forced to face some
things about themselves and their relationship they were hoping to avoid.
DISTRIBUTION: Distribute freely, so long as you send me
the address, and leave these tags intact.
FEEDBACK: Does Marti Noxon have
serious issues?
DEDICATION: To James Marsters…
a heck of a fella who’s a whole Hell of a lot more
insightful and sane than a lot of his fans. Yeah, that’s right. I insulted the
creepy Spuffy contingent… out loud. Sorry, but I have
a really difficult time understanding people who think kidnapping, stalking,
emotional torture and rape are legitimate forms of romantic expression... Marti
and Jane. *pointed look* Those of you who feel so inclined, flame away. You
only prove my point. My deepest thanks, as usual, to Cris,
who makes a Thesaurus completely unnecessary and is the best all-around bud a
chick can ask for. *G*
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter One
Michael Laslow had worked for
Wolfram & Hart for each of the ten years since he
graduated from college. First in Cleveland, then Toledo,
New York and Miami, and
finally, the brand new, state of the art complex built in
Los Angeles in 2003.
During his tenure with the firm, he had seen a great many
disturbing,
terrifying, blood-curdling and soul-shivering sights –
including some of his
bosses, co-workers, and many of their clients. For the
first few years, he’d
gone as far as to regularly patronize a witch doctor for
an elixir to stave off
the nightmares.
But none of that could compare to the sheer,
skin-crawling horror of his current
employer’s behavior over the past several weeks since he
and the headmistress of
the Slayer School single-handedly destroyed a portal well
on its way to
swallowing the entire city.
Like this afternoon, for example. Currently, his
intrepid, much admired, widely
respected and frequently lauded boss was busy his office,
working on his short
game... whistling the chorus from ‘Ode to Joy’.
Absolutely horrifying.
Now, it could safely be said that Michael had spent a
good portion of his time
and energy since he began working for Angel trying to get
the vampire to...
loosen up a little, for lack of a better term. Or at
least do something other
than sit in his office twelve to twenty hours a day,
glowering at the endless
river of files he insisted on reading from the archives.
He’d tried every
holistic remedy he knew of to promote harmony within his
working environment –
flower arrangements in his office, aromatherapy, as well
as a little burbling
Zen fountain on the desk. He’d suggested spa treatments,
vacations, long,
full-speed night drives up the coast in Angel’s utterly
disused Maserati. He’d
referred him to mystical call girls and therapists,
incredible plays and stage
shows, parties, private screenings of the most popular
and acclaimed movies...
everything and anything Wolfram & Hart’s extensive
resources and connections
could provide. All for naught.
However, a full fortnight of dusk ‘til dawn outings
fighting monsters and
chasing down dimensional anomalies had the vampire
chipper as a spring morning.
An ironic logic Michael found utterly insensible.
But, alas, he had been told when he took this position
that Mr. Angel was...
eccentric. An anachronism. A walking dichotomy. A vampire
with a soul, a
sometimes short, vicious temper, and a distasteful
dedication to doing the right
thing at any cost, with a treasure chest of
pharmaceutical-worthy neuroses and
strange habits. Michael had just never quite expected...
this.
The whistling moved closer to his desk.
"Michael."
The assistant glanced up and fought the urge to grimace
at his brightly smiling
boss. Had he ever truly thought it was a good idea for
the vampire to be
happier?
"Sir. How was your game today?" he inquired
politely.
"Well, I’m no Tiger Woods, that’s for sure. But I
have eternity to improve,
so... I forbear. Did you take care of that errand I gave
you earlier?"
He had to waste more energy on not sighing or rolling his
eyes, but rather,
keeping the conciliatory tone he liked to think made him
invaluable. "Exactly as
you requested, Sir. Calla Lilies this morning – four
dozen, freshly picked. Two
dozen red roses and the mineral water during her
lunchtime training, and the six
dozen sterling roses for tonight."
If it was possible, Angel’s smile grew bigger yet.
"Excellent. You’re the best,
Michael." He began to turn away, but stopped.
"And you got the tickets..."
Michael held up them up: first balcony for opening night
of the Bellina
International Ballet’s production of 'Giselle' – his
boss’s favorite. He handed
them over with a flourish.
"Remind me to give you a raise," the vampire
fairly chirped, and strolled back
to his office. "No calls for a while. I have some
things to take care of."
"Yes, Sir. Of course," Michael replied to the
closing doors. It was 4:30, and
that meant that for the next few hours, Mr. Angel would
be busy on the phone,
chatting with his paramour.
Who was, of all things, a vampire Slayer. Named *Buffy*.
A haughty little snot
who liked to treat Michael like he was a fungus growing
on the rug outside her
vampire’s door. Which suited him just fine, considering
he didn’ t like her a
great deal more than she did him. Her snide remarks about
his suits, his hair,
his shoes, and his sexual orientation grated like
fingernails on a chalkboard
each time she came to visit. She dressed like a dime
store trollop, and
gallivanted in and out of Angel’s offices as though she
had some inherent right
to do so, and her lover wasn’t one of the most feared and
powerful beings in
this dimension.
Michael had a very difficult time believing that this
particular... *person* was
the heroine whom his truly legendary boss was so besotted
with.
But then, he supposed he wasn’t paid to judge the company
Mr. Angel kept, but
rather to keep his affairs in order. Which he
accomplished splendidly.
He sighed and hit a key on his phone console, instantly
reaching the purchasing
department. "This is Laslow.
Add a box of Godiva truffles to the flowers I
ordered this morning, would you? Also... champagne. The
’52 Moet should do
nicely. Two bottles. Have them chilling in the limo when
it collects Mr. Angel
and his guest."
He hung up. Michael Laslow had
a job to do, and come ensouled vampire manic
upswings or snotty, smart-mouthed demon hunters, he would
do it.
"Good afternoon, Michael."
He glanced up and remembered that there were people he
liked a great deal less
than Mr. Angel’s girlfriend. "Good afternoon,
ma’am."
"What kind of mood’s he in today?" the newcomer
asked.
"A very fine one," Michael reported
reluctantly.
"Great. This is so much more fun when I get to ruin
a good day. Buzz him, would
you?"
~
"So Vi says, ‘What are we ever going to use Calculus
for in real life? We’re
Slayers, not physicists!’ Which, really, I couldn’t argue
with. And Will goes
off on this whole tangent about how understanding cogents and signs could make
the difference between enjoying a nice Sunday night
Matthew McConaughey marathon
and bowing down before the God of Hell Demons, who’s gearing
up to flay you with
whips of fire for all eternity. I swear, if she had been
a teacher at Sunnydale,
I might actually have gone to class once in a
while."
Angel smiled to himself as Buffy babbled about the
details of her day. It
brought to mind happier times when they’d first known
each other, when she would
show up at his apartment before patrol and do the exact
same thing. Funny that
the characters hadn’t really changed that much.
Buffy was always wound up with unspent energy at this
part of her schedule –
between her freshman weapons class and her nightly
training patrol with the
seniors -- so he had made it his habit to call her and
let her enthusiasm and
verve wash through him before his own day really began.
She was better than
coffee for that.
Of course, today was different. Today – or rather,
tonight – they’d both cleared
their schedules to go out on their first real date. They
had been spending
nearly all of their rare and precious free time together
over the past couple of
weeks... but were usually training Slayers, hunting, or
putting out any number
of other mystical fires that continued to spring up here
and there around the
city as the result of the Convergence that sparked their
reunion. There hadn’t
been any time yet just for them.
"You got Faith to take your patrol tonight,
right?" he reminded her. Buffy had a
great many important responsibilities at the school, and
no Michael to keep her
schedule straight for her. He’d given her a leather Dayminder to help with that,
but the last time he’d seen it, it was sitting in the top
drawer of her desk,
acting as a catchall for her unpaid bills, hastily
scrawled notes, and unread
correspondence. Organization was just not his beloved’s
forte. She was very much
a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-high-fashion-pants sort of
woman.
"Please. Did you really think I’d flake on something
this important? I had to
buy a new dress!" she responded, as if he’d
suggested she forgot to breathe or
something.
"And I’m sure that tedious chore really put you
out," he chuckled. "I remember
how shopping is one of the great banes of your
existence."
"No, the shopping I like. It’s the credit card
statements that give me
headaches. I think we might have to start selling the
girls into slavery to pay
some of the bills."
He frowned. "Buffy, I’ve told you... if you need
money..."
"No. Angel, I’m not going to take your money. It’s
not like we’re starving."
Of their many old and ongoing issues, money was one of
the only spanking new
ones. He had it, and wanted to share it. She didn’t, and
refused to take
charity, even from him. In a twisted way, he enjoyed the
normalcy of this
particular disagreement.
"The girls need decent weapons. That so-called
"shelter" you live and work in is
collapsing around your ears – Xander
can’t keep duct taping it together forever.
And what about books? Supplies? Computers? I have more
money than I can ever
use. Let me help you guys. Think of it as an endowment.
You can name the dungeon
after me or something."
Buffy laughed. "We don’t *have* a dungeon. Look, can
we not argue about this
tonight? We’re supposed to be on our very best First Date
Behavior: no spitting,
no swearing, and absolutely no arguing about money."
"Fine," he relented, "But you know if I
write Robin a fat check, he’ll have it
budgeted, cashed and spent before you realize what hit
you. Educators are like
that."
"ANYway... you still
haven’t told me where you’re taking me tonight."
"That’s... sort of the operative definition of
surprise."
"But how will I know what shoes to wear?" she
complained.
Before he could respond, the intercom buzzed. "Damn
it. I’m going to have to
tattoo the meaning of the words ‘no interruptions’ on
Michael’s forehead."
Buffy snorted. "He probably wants to water the
plants or something. He’s made
getting on my nerves part of his job description.
Dink."
"Buffy...” he chided half-heartedly “Be ready at
7:30, okay?"
Giving in to a sudden urge to channel Faith, she purred,
"I was born ready,
sailor."
He chuckled as he hung up and tapped the intercom key.
"Yes, Michael?"
"I’m sorry to interrupt, Sir," his assistant
apologized.
‘Sure you are,’ Angel thought, but didn’t say. "It’s
fine. I thought you
cancelled my meetings this afternoon?"
"I did, Sir. But... Miss Morgan is here to see
you."
Ah. Of course. There was nothing in the universe that
could burst his Buffy
Bubble quite as quickly and thoroughly as a visit from
the Senior Partners’
hottest and deadest young flunky.
"Tell her to make an appointment," he snapped.
Which, naturally, Lilah took as
her cue to march right in, pour herself a drink,
and ease into her favorite chair.
"You know what the worst thing about Hell is?"
she opened.
"The tacky outfits?" he grumbled.
"I see you’ve been working on your sense of humor.
Nice. Actually, I was
thinking air conditioning, but I guess the moment’s gone
now."
"What do you want, Lilah?"
She gave him a smirk. "Oh, right. Wouldn’t want to
make you late for your date."
She gulped down her drink before she went on. "The
Senior Partners have a job
for you."
His posture went rigid. Every now and again, his
otherworldly "bosses" gave him
some morally ambiguous hoop to jump through just to
remind him who really ran
things around here. It was never anything so heavy that
he could out-and-out say
no: "borrowing" artifacts from questionable
"owners", obtaining rare texts (with
Gwen’s help, oftentimes) ostensibly for Wesley’s library,
recruiting specific
candidates for employment, and an occasional run to
another dimension for one
seemingly meaningless delivery or another. Small
potatoes, really, considering
some of the possible consequences of selling your soul.
He was ever wary, nonetheless. He didn’t labor under any illusions
– there was a
catch to everything involving the Senior Partners. And
when the job was done, he
unfailingly assigned a seer to monitor the situation for
possible consequences.
His experience with Billy had taught him at least that
much.
"What is it?"
The deceased lawyer gave him her patented, 'I hate you
and love nothing more
than to watch you squirm’ smile as she steepled her fine fingers under her chin.
"They’re expecting a VIP to pop into this dimension
in the next couple of weeks.
You’re doing the meet and greet."
"Who?" Angel always made sure to get the
important questions answered first,
even though he knew that ultimately, he couldn’t say no,
in spite of any
posturing he made to the contrary. Connor’s happy life
and Cordelia’s ongoing
care made sure of that. The Senior Partners were well
aware of their purchase on
his proverbial short hairs.
As if she could read his thoughts, Lilah
asked, "Does it really matter?"
"Yes, it does," he informed her, "I only
run your bosses’ errands if I know
exactly what I’m getting into." It might be an
impotent gesture, but he made it
nonetheless.
She regarded him with a mocking expression of respect,
but her true nature shone
through her sardonic words. "Not that it makes any
difference. We both know
you’ll do it, whatever it is. Otherwise your shiny little
world could all come
crashing really painfully down all around you, couldn’t
it? Anyway... you and I
both work on the Need-to-Know. The partners don’t think
either of us needs to
know the exact identity of this guest. We just need to
make sure he’s... taken
care of."
"So it’s a man," Angel observed.
"You’re so much quicker than you look – which, in
your case, is a good thing.
Yes, he’s a man – a very important one who could prove to
be an invaluable
addition to our team."
"Whose team?" Angel asked, fairly certain he
already knew the answer. Why would
the Senior Partners assign him to anyone who might
actually make his job easier?
But Lilah surprised him – a rare
occurrence. "Oh, I think you’ll find he’s a key
player in your future, too, Angel. This visit should
serve to teach you a few
things you don’t seem to want to learn."
He squelched the flash of panic that ripped through his
chest. What the Hell was
that supposed to mean? "Is that something the
partners thought you ‘needed to
know’?"
"Sometimes I make it my business to know things that
aren’t on the official
agenda," she replied evenly. "Just be ready.
You’ll get a call when he arrives."
As she rose to leave, he asked, "What exactly do
they want me to do to ‘take
care’ of this ‘VIP’?"
Wesley’s ex-lover paused and momentarily flashed a smug
grin over her shoulder.
"They said to follow your gut. If it’s not spilling
out all over the floor, that
is. Have fun tonight. Send your pet Slayer my regards.
And try to get her to eat
something, would you? She's so... bony. That just can't
be healthy."
Then she was gone, leaving Angel to struggle with the
dark fear that something
truly diabolical was about to happen to his only recently
lightened reality.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Two
To Buffy’s surprise, as first dates went, this one pretty
much sucked. Not that
all the wonderful, romantic trappings weren’t there: the
limo, the flowers and
chocolate, the amazing ballet, Angel looking completely
yum-worthy in his tux.
The problem was, however hot he looked, however hard he
tried to be sweet and
attentive, he just wasn’t there with her.
She set down her fork and gave him a hard look. "So,
are you going to tell me
what’s wrong, or should I start up a round of ’20
Agonizing Questions’?"
Angel was busy glowering at something that must have been
fascinating, crawling
around in his untouched ziti. He glanced up as if he’d
forgotten she was there.
"Hm?"
"Angel, you haven’t done more than grunt at me all
night. What’s going on? Today
on the phone, you were all
good-humor-I-can’t-wait-to-be-with-you guy. Now it’s
like somebody vacuumed out your personality. You didn’t
happen to run into a
Hellgod named Glory this
afternoon, did you?"
He shook his head and gave her an obviously forced smile.
"It’s nothing. I’m
sorry. Just some residual work stuff." He reached
over and took her hand. "I ’m
here now."
Buffy arched an eyebrow at him in reproach. "Have
you met me? I’m not letting
you get away with blowing me off. You’ve always got work
stuff. The last couple
of weeks, we’ve had nothing *but* work stuff. So what’s
really got you so
distracted?"
Angel looked into her eyes for a measure of her strong
heartbeats, debating with
himself – again – how much of his burden was right to lay
on her. But they had
agreed from the beginning – no secrets. "I told you
that the partners sometimes
ask me to do things for them."
Buffy’s chiding demeanor darkened into a frightening
glower as she let go of his
hand. If there was one thing she would love to do for
Angel, it was get him out
of Wolfram & Hart. No matter how often he protested
that he was needed there...
and "satisfied" with the work he was doing, she
knew it was crap. His body
language – the tension that stormed off him whenever they
got together after a
day at the office – spoke *way* louder than the words she
was fully aware were
meant to protect her.
"Yeah..." she replied in short, her tone
expressing all she didn’t say.
"Lilah stopped by this
afternoon to give me an even more vague and disturbing
directive than usual. Some ‘VIP’ is arriving from another
dimension shortly. And
they want me to see to his ‘comfort’ when he
arrives."
Her eyes went wide. "Who?"
"Like I said, they wouldn’t tell me," he
shrugged, "But I can guarantee I’m not
going to like it. The last time I ‘helped out’ an
inter-dimensional client for
the Senior Partners, he almost got all of us
killed."
Buffy couldn’t hold her tongue anymore, and her fear for
him turned her temper
into a lash, "I can’t believe you let them keep
doing this to you! You’re better
than that place, Angel! How could you be so stupid to
take a job with the Root
of All Evil?"
Knowing where her anger originated, he responded calmly,
"I’ve explained this to
you before. The resources at Wolfram & Hart..."
The Slayer slammed her fist on the table, interrupting
his usual excuses and
making the remains of their dinner – and Angel
himself—jump violently.
"Who CARES about the stupid resources!? You could do
just as much good working
with us at the school! Angel..." she took a deep
breath and lowered her voice.
"That place is eating you up from the inside. I can
see it every time you leave
there. Please... don’t let them jerk you around like
this. I just got you
back... I don’t want to lose you to some stupid
job."
For the first time that night, he gave her a warm,
genuine smile, and reached
across the table to reclaim her trembling hand.
"You’re never going to lose me."
She softened automatically at the love in his voice, and
the gravity of his vow.
"But you’re still not going to quit."
He gave a little shake of his head. "I can’t, Buffy.
I’ve got too much invested
in reining in the evil that place has perpetrated over
the centuries. You know I
would never do anything for them that would jeopardize
that investment," he
tugged on her hand, leaning her closer across the table
for two. Looking deeply
into her eyes, he added softly, "Or my relationship
with you. I promise."
Buffy accepted his tender kiss and shoved aside the
growing feeling that there
was some other reason Angel stayed at Wolfram & Hart
that he wasn’t telling her.
For now, she had to accept that there were still things
between them that they
couldn’t – or didn’t want to – share. She knew that was
true of herself, at
least. For now, just being together had to be enough.
When they parted, Buffy kept her hold on his gaze, and
his big, strong cool
hands – the only hands that had ever truly felt right in
hers. "Okay. But
Angel.. please... be careful, okay? And don’t try to
protect me from what you
do. Two sets of superhuman eyes are always better than
one."
He chuckled "Are you saying you’d take on the
legions of Hell to defend my blind
side?"
"You better believe it, pal," she affirmed,
beaming. "The universe conspired to
get us back together, so I’m thinking that means ‘no
matter what’. Now... eat
your ziti. I hear a Death By Chocolate calling me."
Angel grimaced. "They really need to find a better
name for that."
Her grin turned mischievous. "Why? Which way of
dying would you prefer? My vote
is, next time I go, it’s by chocolate."
Angel actually *could* think of a better way to die –
especially tonight, seeing
her in that barely-there slip dress with the slender
straps and the plunging
neckline... the way it fit in a carefully planned fashion
to accentuate all her
most feminine features: the turn of her hip, the cut of
her tiny waist, the warm
valley between her breasts, her sleek, powerful legs...
Not that he needed any such guidance.
He swallowed stiffly and shifted in his seat. Going there
remained a problem,
for the time being. He’d known full well that once he and
Buffy had rekindled
their relationship, they were eventually – and fairly
quickly – going to have to
deal with the topic of sex.
So he’d spared some of his finest researchers – including
two new specialists of
Romany descent that he’d personally recruited – to find
some way around (or
preferably to destroy) the loophole in the curse. They
had every possible
version of the text – including the one translated by
Jenny Calendar – and
assured him that they were mere days from finding some
solution.
But for now...
"I’ll second that vote," he said with a smile,
turning his attention to the now,
raising his glass for a toast, "To Death By
Chocolate."
Buffy clinked her glass to his. "But only if it’s
not some kind of cocoa demon
or something."
~
By the time the limousine pulled up to the school, it was
after
all but forgotten his meeting with Lilah,
and Buffy was more than a little tipsy
from the wine at dinner, and the champagne in the car as
they rode around the
city, talking, kissing and doing a fair amount of
groping.
Angel helped her out, tucking her arm firmly in his to
keep her balanced while
she kicked her high-heeled pumps into the nearby bushes.
He nodded over his
should to the driver, who dutifully went to retrieve
them.
"What I don’t get is," Buffy slurred, "How
come if I have all these super
healing powers and stuff, I still get drunk so easily?
Did I ever tell you about
the Cave Buffy incident?"
“You did,” he replied. She lurched a little, and Angel
shifted his arm up around
her shoulders to keep her from careening off into the
grass. "Maybe because you
weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet? There’s nothing about
Slaying that requires
an enhanced metabolism. In fact, I’d think that your body
would adjust to
utilize energy more efficiently. For stamina."
She glanced up at him. "That question didn’t really
require a whole thesis. It
was sort of rhetorical."
He smiled. "I’m a thinker. I can’t help it."
Buffy snorted at his understatement, and promptly smashed
her stocking-ed foot
on the bottom step. While she was busy howling in pain,
Angel swept her up into
the shelter of his arms and simply carried her the rest
of the way up to the
door.
"Ooh! I should get drunk more often!" she
warbled happily, taking the
opportunity to nibble on his jaw.
"Key, Buffy," he requested, his voice husky. He
vowed to call his Soul Team in
for an update tomorrow morning. Between the sheer joy of
just being with her
again, and the pure, burning *want* raging through every
cell in his body, he
figured that time was growing uncomfortably short. He’d
already put in a call to
the Madame who had generated the mystical prophylactic
for Groo and Cordy a few
years ago, as a temporary solution... just in case. She
assured him she could
modify the formula sufficiently to suit his needs.
He only hoped she could do it quickly.
After a lengthy struggle, Buffy finally produced her keys
and Angel steadied her
as she fought them into the lock. That done, he carried
her as quietly as
possible up the four flights of winding stairs to the top
floor, where she,
Faith,
The latter was bringing a nightcap into his suite when he
spotted the couple.
"Ah, Angel. Good to see you again," he greeted,
and to the vampire’s surprise,
actually seemed to mean it. His genial expression became
slightly less friendly,
however, when he noted the condition of Angel’s burden.
"Buffy," he said simply,
but still easily expressing his disapproval.
"Oh, Giles, save it," she muttered at him,
"I’m 25 years old. If I want to get
tanked with my honey, that’s my business." She laid
a sloppy kiss on Angel’s
cheek in illustration.
Giles caught Angel’s eye with a dark frown.
"’Honey’?"
"Uh..." Angel gulped.
"Jeez! What’s the big! It’s not like we’re having
sex or anything!" The
intoxicated Slayer cried with a dramatic gesture that
almost sent her spilling
out of Angel’s embrace. "Just dinner!"
The ex-Watcher rolled his eyes. "Thank you for the
information. I’m certain I’ll
sleep easier now."
"It’s not... I’m just... uh... helping her get to
bed. Uh! I mean her room! Just
to her room!" Angel stammered like the teenaged boy
busted by his girlfriend’s
father he currently resembled. "We’ll, uh... get
together soon and you can tell
me how
He hurried down the hall and kicked Buffy’s apartment
door in rather than
wasting time waiting for her to fumble with the keys again.
Safely inside, he
closed it behind him with his elbow and made his way over
to carefully deposit
Buffy on her king-sized bed.
"Well. That was bracing," he observed.
"Guess I don’t need to make you a key," Buffy
giggled, and collapsed onto her
back. "Ooh! Spinny."
Angel smiled to himself as he made his way to the
kitchenette.
"Whatcha doin’?" Buffy called after him.
"I’m going to make you some coffee."
"Hey, haven’t you ever heard that all coffee does is
make you a wide-awake
drunk?" she quizzed. “Or… make me a wide awake
drunk, I guess.”
"I think I’m familiar with the sensation,"
Angel murmured to himself, recalling
the gallons of tea he used to drink trying to fight his
hangovers as a human.
And there was another detail he’d neglected to consider
when he and Buffy
started seeing each other again – if this was going to be
the mature partnership
they both said they wanted, Buffy was going to have to
learn a bit more about
the past he’d tried to shelter her from in their early
years. And worse, he was
actually going to have to tell her about it.
But not tonight.
"It’ll help stave off your inevitable
headache," he stated so that she could
hear him. "Along with a big glass of water and some
aspirin."
" I’m not that drunk! I’m not even sick!
Yet..." she called back. "Angel?"
"Mm?"
"I had a really nice time tonight. It’s the first
time anybody’s taken me out to
dinner since Wood, like ten million years ago."
Angel popped his head out to glare at her… which Buffy,
of course, missed
completely. "I didn’t know you went out with
Robin." Great. Yet more ammunition
he didn’t need to add to his paranoid, ‘I’ll never be
good enough ’ fantasies.
He ducked back into the kitchen and focused on completing
the coffee ritual with
a bit more gusto.
Buffy laughed as she sat up and yanked her dress over her
head. "It was only one
date. And then him and Giles went behind my back to try
and kill Spike, so that
all got shot straight to Hell. It’s a long story. His mom
was a Slayer, did I
tell you that? Wood, not Spike. Obviously."
"Yes, you told me," Angel ground out through
his teeth, and refused to entertain
any further thoughts of either Wood or Spike touching
Buffy. Or even so much as
eating an intimate meal with her.
She struggled with the hooks on her bra for a while, then
finally gave up and
ripped the thing off. Next came her pantyhose, which were
an even bigger
aggravation, and wound up little more than a puddle of
nylon shreds on the floor
at her feet. All the while she continued to ramble.
"He was really nice. And I have to say, it totally
threw me to find out there
was a Slayer out there who actually had a *kid*. I
mean... why would she do
that? She died when he was *four*. Incidentally, killed
by Spike, who happened
to show up at dinner that night... it’s a whole big
thing." The last of her
energy used trying to undress, Buffy crawled to the head
of the bed and flopped
face down on her pile o’ fluffy pillows. The smothering
sensation wasn’t cool,
though, and the pressure on her stomach made her rethink
the wisdom of her
position before her dinner ended up all over her new
comforter. So she turned
over and stretched out full length, her arms over her
head, and found that
wiggling her fingers toward the headboard helped distract
her from the spinning.
"Besides, I think Wood and Faith make a cute couple.
He makes her blush all the
time, which you can imagine looks pretty funny on ‘I’m
such a bad-ass’ Faith.
He’s really sweet. And smart. And that bald thing totally
works for him. He’s
got a nice skull."
Angel scowled darkly at the coffee tray, reminding
himself of her inebriated
condition as he returned to her room...
And nearly dropped it all over the floor to find her all
but naked on the bed,
eyes closed and head tilted back as she stretched
languidly. He’d forgotten how
warm and pink her skin was... how all her toned muscles
curved and cut her into
such a tiny, perfect feminine form. Her pert little
breasts, the nipples hard
and champagne pink in the cool air of the room, fairly
begging for his touch...
"Are you picking the beans in there? I’m getting lonnnnelllyyyy..." she
sing-songed, not realized that
he was standing not ten feet away, utterly
frozen, and trembling with the effort of resisting the
urge to charge over there
and take her like some deranged animal.
Angel cleared his throat, planted thoughts of
bloodthirsty monsters and dirty
dishes firmly in the front of his mind, and finally,
resolutely, marched toward
the bed.
Buffy cracked one eye open and watched him set the coffee
tray down, then turn,
his gaze averted. Oblivious, she sat up and patted the
bed beside her.
Before he accepted the invitation, Angel grabbed the robe
off the bedpost and
handed it to her. "You’ll catch cold."
Buffy tossed the garment away without a thought, and
moved to straddle him the
moment he sat down, grinding herself into his lap. "Mmmm. So maybe you should
warm me up." She claimed his hands from their
clutching place on the comforter
and placed them on her hips, smoothing them upward until
they were cupping her
breasts. She sighed. "Touch me, Angel. I need you
to."
"Buffy, I..." he began to protest, but she
silenced him with a long, deep kiss.
His brain shorted out as her tongue slipped into his
mouth to twine with his,
teasing, drawing it forth so she could suckle it with a
gentle ferocity that
made him moan. His body took over, and he claimed her
breasts of his own accord,
teasing their hard points with the pads of his thumbs.
"God, Buffy," he gasped,
thrusting up into the warmth between her legs as his
kisses wandered down to her
throat. "God, you feel so good..."
"Yes...I want you so much... I’ve been dreaming of
this... forever..." she
moaned, tangling her hands in his hair, urging him
further. Needing him to taste
the fire burning under her skin before it consumed her.
Lost in a passion that had lain dormant for nearly a
decade, Angel eased her
gently back onto the bed and continued devouring her, his
hands trembling as
they smoothed down to explore her legs, slipping beneath
to cup her thong-bared
rear, fitting her lower body to his like pieces of some
sacred puzzle. He moved
to take one turgid nipple into his mouth, rolling his
tongue around the nub
before drawing it between his teeth and gently biting
down.
Buffy cried out, thrusting her hips up into him, and the
scent of her arousal
nearly snapped the last of his extremely tenuous control.
Instead, it reawakened it. He reluctantly released her
and leaned up on his
hands.
"Buffy..."
Bereft, starving, frozen, dizzy, she peered up at him,
her face flushed with
champagne and unspent passion. "Please don’t
stop."
"We can’t do this," he reminded her. "Not
yet. It’s too dangerous. And besides,
you’re drunk. It wouldn’t be right even if we
could."
"I don’t care," Buffy growled, pulling him back
on top of her. "I need you.
There’s not going to be any Perfect Happiness, I promise.
I swear. Please, just
don’t stop."
The frustration he hadn’t had to deal with in years
ripped through him. All this
time, and it was still next to impossible to resist
becoming one with her. If
anything, the ways she had matured, body and soul, only
made him want her more.
Maybe they couldn’t find bliss together... yet. But that
didn’t mean he couldn’t
attain some pleasure in granting her what he was
currently denied.
He nibbled the sensitive underside of her breast and
moved downward, following
the meridian of her form to her belly. He lingered there,
taking the time to
carefully attend every inch of the tender curve, feeling
her body tense, shiver
and relax beneath him, hearing her soft sigh before he
continued. He traced the
strong line of one hipbone with flickering strokes of his
tongue, and then made
his way across her pelvis, kissing the silk and
lace-sheathed heat at her core
before repeating the same on the other side. He laced his
finger under the strap
of her thong, and glanced up to memorize the look of
passion on her beautiful
face before he unveiled her.
Only... it wasn’t so much passion he found on her
features as the peaceful bliss
of sleep. She snored softly.
He chuckled wryly to himself and rose. "Well. That
takes care of that problem, I
guess." Gently, he lifted Buffy from the bed, turned
down the covers, and tucked
her in with a soft kiss to her forehead.
She gave a deep, satisfied sigh, and murmured in her
sleep, "Love you..."
Angel smiled and brushed a stray lock of hair from her
eyes, traced the turn of
her cheekbone, the pert line of her nose, and finally the
full curve of her lips
before he turned off the light.
"I love you too, sweetheart. Dream well," he
whispered, and made his way to the
door.
There would be another night for them – a lifetime’s
worth, if he had anything
to say about it. But when that night came, it would be
both of them there, sure
of the rightness of the moment, sober and eyes open,
hearts and bodies laid
bare, together.
For now, though, a cold shower was definitely in order.
Several of them, in
fact.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Three
"Rough night, B?" Faith asked far more loudly
than necessary, considering she
was sitting right across the breakfast table from her
suffering sister Slayer.
Buffy moaned into her folded arms. "Stop shouting
and just kill me already."
With considerable effort, she raised her head. "I
think it’s your turn."
The brunette grinned. "It’s no fun when you ask for
it."
"So... the date went well..."
Her best friend didn’t bother to resist. "Up to the
point I remember, yeah. The
requisite flowers, restaurant, the usual two-step about
the fight against
evil... the four billion gallons of really expensive
champagne. But I woke up
alone in my underwear this morning, so I’m thinking I
missed the best part," she
reported with a sigh.
"You passed out on ANGEL?" Faith yelped,
drawing glances from the girls at the
next table. "Man, that sucks!"
"Put an ad in the paper, why don’t you? It’s easier
on your voice," Buffy
growled. "Nothing happened... I don’t think. Except
I lost my new Prada’s."
The missing shoes magically appeared in her blurry line
of vision, the straps
dangling from a set of very Giles-like fingers. Buffy
raised her horrified gaze
to the face attached to them.
"Angel’s driver was kind enough to drop these by for
you this morning," he
informed her dryly. "Fortunately, he also reported
that the rest of your
clothing appeared to go with you to your room."
Faith burst out laughing. "Oh, MAN! I gotta get the
whole story on this from
Angel!"
you know... funky before you passed out?"
"No. But at least I didn’t puke," Buffy
whispered back, "I don’t think." She
flashed a panicked look at Giles as he sat down beside
Faith. "Besides, we
wouldn’t do that! The curse! It’d be irresponsible unless
we knew it was safe!"
Giles gave her a look. "Angel was quite sober. And
apparently, unnerved by
running into me in the hall. I’m fairly certain that was
all the safety
required."
Faith snorted in disagreement, and Buffy shot her a clear
‘SHUT UP!’ look.
"The curse?"
but... the curse isn’t cursey
anymore, remember?"
Three sets of shocked eyes locked on her.
"What?" Buffy whispered. "What did you
just say?"
"Whoa, hold on there, Glinda.
What do you mean, ‘not cursey’? Since when?"
Faith
snapped.
Giles merely stared at the redhead, who was suddenly
blushing furiously as she
realized that none of them knew this.
"You mean... Angel didn’t tell you I thought Jenny
maybe rewrote the spell
without the loophole?" she squeaked in growing
horror.
All three heads shook in tandem.
"Oh. Uhhh... oops?"
the witch remarked with a sheepish smile.
~
"What do you mean, ‘no loophole’?" Angel asked
his new Gypsy employee
incredulously for the dozenth
time.
"Exactly as I say," she replied patiently yet
again, "The text of the curse is
not intact as originally created by my ancestors. Whoever
translated the ancient
language was either very sloppy, or very clever. See
here," the dark-skinned
woman slid the notes across the table toward him.
"These last passages are
completely different. The theme of the original text is
pain – eternal,
unrelenting vengeance, without hope of mercy. But this
new one speaks of justice
and balance. Of Cosmic Right. The results of the two
spells, as well as their
underlying intent, are as dissimilar as can possibly be
while keeping the core
purpose – the restoration itself – intact."
Angel gaped at her, still dumbfounded. He had hoped the
staff would find
something soon... but he wasn’t expecting this.
"There’s... no happiness
clause," he recapped foolishly, as if repeating it
over and over again would
make it more believable. “There hasn’t been since… I
returned from Hell…”
The gypsy woman shrugged. "It would appear not. This
new spell is designed to
permanently ensoul a vampire.
Which is the only sane course of action, in my
opinion."
Angel blinked at her, hearing the words, but unable to
actually absorb the true
meaning of what she was telling him.
Someone – either Jenny or
have been the former, because why wouldn’t Buffy’s best
friend tell them
something so important? Jenny, at least, had the excuse
that he had murdered her
horribly before she could alert anyone.
An equally hornswaggled Wesley
re-read the notes himself, and murmured, "My
God."
are greater forces at work in your lives than that pale
ghost, vampire."
Angel flinched involuntarily at her words – no doubt some
residual fear of his
childhood deity – or maybe of Gypsies.
He took a deep breath, and assumed his customary detached
business mask to urge
his paralyzed shock under control. "Thank you,
here." The woman nodded to them and exited the
office without another word,
leaving Wesley and Angel staring at one another.
"Angel, this... this is momentous!" Wesley
finally cried, his face lighting with
a bright smile. "This is incredible! You’re
free!"
Angel sat back in his chair, reeling. Free. Free of the
fetters that had bound
him for eight years. Free to live his life without the
terror of Angelus forever
hanging over his head. To pursue the ultimate goal of
every being – happiness.
The realization was so earth-shattering, so
reality-altering, such a fundamental
shift in the foundation of his existence, he found
himself utterly unable to act
or speak at all, but only sat there, staring dumbly at
the pages of notes on the
table before him.
Wesley chuckled as he rose to pour his friend a Scotch,
neat – a triple – at the
wet bar. Angel accepted the drink from him, but only
continued to gawk, now into
the amber liquid.
"It can’t be that simple," he mumbled to
himself. "Nothing’s ever this easy."
Wes straightened, a bit disappointed, but not entirely
surprised at Angel’s
reaction. The habits of centuries were hard to break, and
the vampire had
cultivated – and rightly so – a rather dark worldview
over that time. He, on the
other hand, was suddenly unable to stop grinning like a
fool. He retook the seat
beside his friend.
"We’ll do further research to confirm this, of
course," he assured the even
paler than usual demon. "It wouldn’t do to simply
assume that Miss Myra is
correct. But what I’ve read thus far indicates that her
observations of the
change in text, at least, are legitimate."
Angel shook his head, got up and moved to the wall of
glass behind his desk,
gazing out at the sparkling daytime skyline of his
beloved city.
"I don’t like it," he commented, turning back
to face his colleague, "There has
to be a catch."
"Why, Angel?" Wesley asked gently, "If, as
when she translated it? I’ve read the notes Giles made on
the matter. It seems
clear to me that when she intended to re-ensoul you back in Sunnydale, it
was
not only an action meant to stop Angelus’ reign of
terror, but also an attempt
to make amends for the wrong she felt her people had done
you. It was a gift to
friends whom she felt she’d betrayed. I sincerely doubt
that such a gesture
would come with strings."
"All this time..." Angel voiced softly,
"All that pain. Buffy and I..." His eyes
filled. "It was all for nothing."
Wesley got up and approached him, laying a comforting
hand on the shaking
vampire’s shoulder. "That’s not true. Leaving Sunnydale allowed you to find your
own way... your own purpose in the world, independent of
your very complicated
relationship with Buffy. You’ve told me many times that
the true reason it
didn’t work between you was your lack of self-worth, and
her youth. Now... you
have self-esteem in spades, and Buffy has grown into an
extraordinary young
woman. So in spite of the pain, in the end, this time
apart has been the best
thing that could have happened to your affair, wouldn’t
you say? Without the
agony of separation, how could you truly appreciate the
joy of being together?"
Angel finally managed a small smile. "I think you
missed your calling as a
greeting card writer. Or possibly a therapist."
The Englishman blushed. "I’ve only that talent for
those I care about. And even
then..." his self-conscious expression became
thoughtful, "Even then, I fail
more often than not."
Angel considered him carefully. Sometimes he wondered –
did a part of Wesley,
deep down in some eternal place where the manipulation of
reality couldn’t touch
him, remember what had happened with Connor?
"I wish that I had been a better friend at the
beginning of the Darla debacle,"
the younger man went on sadly, "Perhaps things might
not have devolved the way
they had if I was."
"There was nothing else you could have done,
Wes," Angel reassured him, "I
probably wouldn’t have let you if you tried. That was my
cross to bear.
Figuratively speaking."
His friend’s demeanor lightened. "Well... that’s the
past, isn’t it? Things are
very different now. I should think this bit of news goes
a long way toward
solving the difficulty you faced with Buffy last
night."
Wide-eyed, Angel inquired, "What? How did
you..."
The head of Wolfram & Hart’s Arcane Resources
Division waved him off. "If
there’s one thing I remember quite well, it’s the look of
an... intimately
frustrated man."
The frustrated man in question laughed, then quickly
sobered once more. "The
physical barrier may be gone, but that doesn’t mean
anything is solved between
Buffy and I. There are more emotional walls between us
than anything, and I
don’t want to use lovemaking as a shortcut around dealing
with them."
"No, of course not. Perhaps, for the time being,
it’s best not to share this
news with her," Wes suggested. Before Angel could
protest, he went on, "I
realize that you don’t like keeping things from Buffy.
But..."
"I know," Angel said, "Maybe that safety
net is the best thing for us until
things are more... stable. I have a lot to think through
before I tell her,
anyway."
"Indeed," his friend concurred. "I imagine
that you do."
~
Buffy, still in angry shock at the news her best friend
had neglected to share
with her, left breakfast in a temper to go teach her
first two defense classes
of the day, in desperate need to work off some of her
frustration. The
realization that the supposedly insurmountable obstacle
that had driven her and
Angel apart all those years ago wasn’t only *not* a brick
wall, but was barely
even a bump in the grass...
Going for a workout was better than losing it and
destroying the dining hall in
a psychotic rage.
A crushed and guilt-ridden
her after second period. He took the seat beside her on
the leather couch.
"
transgression, considering the circumstances at the time
you discovered it."
The Witch shook her head, her sweet features marked with
misery. "I thought I
told him. I mean... we didn’t really have time to
*talk*-talk, but... when I
left, I *know* I told him telepathically. And when he
said, "Thanks," he had
this look on his face... I honestly assumed he heard me.
I mean... he and Buffy
just started seeing each other again without the curse
ever coming up at
all...." She heaved a woeful sigh. "I guess
that’s why they say assuming makes
an ass out of you and me."
"Buffy knows, now," Giles reminded her.
"She’ll inform Angel, and what they
decide from there is up to them. It won’t matter what
happened in the past."
"I tried to call him," she lamented, "His
assistant said he’s in meetings all
morning. I hope he’s not too mad."
"I’m sure he won’t be. If anyone understands, it
would be he. Don’t forget –
Angel has never asked you about the spell in all the
ensuing time since you
restored him. It’s possible this news wasn’t meant to be
imparted until now,
when the two of them were in a position to... uh...
utilize it."
"But it’s not just the sex thing, Giles!" she
cried, "Angel’s had to live all
this time thinking he wasn’t allowed to be happy! Being
*afraid* of being happy!
That’s a horrible way to exist! And Buffy might never
forgive me for that!"
"Of course she will. Certainly she’s upset right
now, but once the shock wears
off..."
The library doors slammed open, admitting a glowering
Faith. She stomped across
the room, threw open the weapons cabinet, snatched out
her broadsword, and
banged the doors shut again, shooting the redhead a
withering glare as she
crashed out of the room without a word.
"Buffy and Angel might... but I don’t know if Faith
will,"
"Yes, well...you have to keep in mind that she’s
very protective of Angel. In
time, you’ll see that all of this will work out for the
best. This is hardly the
worst thing that’s happened to anyone involved."
use some happiness for a change. And no more unpleasant
surprises.
~
"So... that’s the long and the short of it,"
Angel told Cordy as he arranged the
bouquet of wildflowers in the new vase he’d brought.
"All this time, there was
never any loophole in the curse at all. Wesley says it
was for the best, but...
I’m not so sure."
He finished and stood back to admire his handiwork. Maybe
he’d missed his
calling, too.
"I’d like to think that if I’d known..." he
went on, "Things might have been
easier. For me... for Buffy... for you. But... Wes is
right. We all had to walk
this road to find our destinies." He glanced at his
perpetually sleeping friend.
One thing he was more than sure of was that, even had he
known about the curse
back then, things probably wouldn’t have been any
different between himself and
Cordelia. In fact, it was for
the best that he ’d held back from a romantic
relationship with her, considering the whole fiasco
turned out to be part of
Jasmine’s plan. The damage to all of them might have been
a hundred times worse
had he and Cordy...
Well. It didn’t really matter, now.
He moved to his customary chair beside her and resumed
his constant, silent
prayer that she would wake up.
"Now I guess I have to decide what this means in the
grand scheme of my life. In
the short term, it’s good that Buffy and I can at least
consider the possibility
of a physical relationship. I wonder, though... how many
times has the curse
made me stop and think instead of just acting? Not only
sexually, but in
general? There’ve been so many occasions when it was the
only thing that kept me
from wandering away from my mission completely. Is that
going to happen now? Am
I just going to... I don’t know... forget everything? Let
myself get lost in
whatever Buffy and I are creating together? It would be
so easy..."
And as he often did, he heard his friend’s sharp-edged
reply somewhere in the
back of his mind. ‘Don’t be such a moron! Your mission is
who you *are* now,
Angel. You’re a hero, no matter what else is going on.
Besides, I’ve been saying
for years that what you really need is to get laid. Darla
not withstanding.’
He smiled. "Always the diplomatic deep thinker.
Maybe I am making too much of
this. Really, the bottom line is... Angelus isn’t a
threat anymore. To me or
anyone. The rest aside, there’s just no negative to
that." He heaved a deep
sigh. "Okay. I’m just going to tell Buffy and see
what happens from there. In
the larger sense, of course, since I’m fairly certain
what the immediate
response will be. And I can’t say I’m not looking forward
to it."
He rose and bent to brush a gentle kiss to his friend’s
pale forehead. "I forgot
to tell you. Your pores look amazing. I hope you can see,
wherever you are."
He pulled away and steeled himself for the inevitable
storm of emotion his news
would wring from Buffy. For surely, she would be hit hard
by the knowledge that
he had left her for what she might see as nothing. After
all, the years when he
was gone were filled with little but pain and loss, for
her. Most of which she
faced alone.
His cell rang as he stepped into the hall.
"Angel."
He listened to Michael’s panicked voice on the other
line, and a dread he’d
completely forgotten in the excitement of the past twelve
hours instantly
reclaimed his soul. Without responding, he slapped the
phone shut and sprinted
for the elevator.
An unscheduled portal had just opened in the White Room.
~
In spite of the chaos he found when he arrived, Angel was
the only Wolfram &
Hart employee granted entrance. He expected to see Gunn
in his customary place
there, but was surprised to discover Gwen waiting for him
instead – standing in
the center of a violent electrical storm where the pure
nothingness of the White
Room should be.
"I think I throw off the dimensional shift
polarity," she explained, raising her
voice above the din. "But the portal’s still
opening, and the ‘Tet thought
someone should be here to make sure things were copacetic."
Angel followed her gesture to the ceiling, where what
looked like the top of a
giant tornado funnel was forming, spitting out thunder
and lightning as it grew.
"Where are they?" he asked her, unable to
understand why at least Gunn wouldn’t
be here to see this.
"They split this dimension a couple of weeks ago.
Protecting the sun and all..."
Gwen hollered.
He glanced at her, the only other human besides Buffy in
his life who had ever
made him feel alive – albeit literally. "Protecting
it from what?"
She gave him her trademark sultry smirk. "From
whatever’s coming that made this
happen, I figure."
The funnel expanded until it blotted out the entire
ceiling, then exploded in a
rain of gore and mud, sending Angel and Gwen flying
across the infinite space of
the White Room. The storm increased to an all –consuming
roar, then, in an
instant, ceased entirely. Thick, primordial silence
filled the once again
pristine white.
A dull, wet thud echoed through the quiet, like some
enormous melon plummeting
to earth from a great distance. Angel stiffly pushed
himself to his knees and
looked in the direction his ‘guest’ had fallen.
What he saw lying there made every cell of his being
shrink in horror.
"Ow," groaned the
crumpled figure on the floor. "Bloody Hell!"
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Four
Okay, now that we know who the 'guest' is, I can put in
my disclaimer:
WARNING: "The Last Cut..." is extremely
Spike-heavy, as it delves into the
Spuffy relationship, and its
possible ramifications on B/A. Now, those of you
who hang out at the Babble Board know how I feel about Spuffy... but I have done
my damndest to be even-handed
and fair in my treatment of the whole debacle,
trying to see into the *characters'* feelings about it,
rather than my own, the
writers, the fandom, etc. Some of you may not like that
approach, but as I said
when I started this series, I'm doing a massive internal fanwank to get what's
happened in the past few years to make sense... and
*then* fixing it. Angel's
reactions are extreme, to say the least, so I like to
think that he represents
my real feelings on the matter.
Feel free to let me know what you think.
~
He was coming. Buffy sat on her bed with her hands
clutched in her lap, waiting
as he made his way upstairs. She almost wished they had
installed the fire pole
Faith and Kennedy were always begging for. She was pretty
sure Angel could
shimmy up that thing faster than even he could run four
flights of steps.
So... the waiting was done, and all that was left was her
speech, which she’ d
spent the entire morning (between alternating fits of
rage and panic)
practicing. "Angel, there’s something I have to tell
you..."
His knock on the door interrupted her thoughts, making her
jump. He came in
without waiting for an invitation, and the agonized look
on his face made her
speech fly right out the window.
"Oh my God. Somebody died," she jumped up and
grabbed him roughly. "Angel, who
died?"
He shook his head, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. "No
one. Buffy... you should sit
down." He gently urged her back toward the bed.
She stared at him in irrational fear for a moment until
an idea dawned on her.
She smiled and waved away his distress. "Oh, I don’t
need to sit. I already
know."
He frowned. "You know?"
Buffy nodded. "Of course. Didn’t you think I’d be
the first one to hear?"
Angel sucked in a breath as though she’d stabbed him. She
looked so... elated.
God... *had* she been in love with Spike? The idea made
his stomach curl with
nausea. "You’re... happy about this."
"Of course I am! Angel..." she took a step
toward him, obviously concerned.
"Aren’t you happy? God, isn’t this what you’ve
always wanted? I mean... it’s the
best thing that could happen – for everybody, especially
us. Look at what we’ve
been through all these years. You should be overjoyed
that we finally have a
reason to cut out all this... pretending crap! Come here
-- -go away. Aren’t you
sick of it?"
Angel collapsed into the nearest chair. "I can’t
believe you think that. I
thought..." he gaped at her, blindsided for the
third time that day. "The past
few weeks... things have been so good between us. I
didn’t..."
Buffy knelt beside him. "Exactly. Don’t you see?
This totally lets us off the
hook! We can finally let it go!"
He had spent a great deal of time learning to be
even-handed and cool under
pressure over the centuries. But suddenly, he couldn’t
remember a single reason
why. "I knew it! I knew it, but I couldn’t believe
it would really happen!
You’re leaving me, just like that!"
Buffy’s face scrunched in confusion. "I’m leaving
you because we can have sex?
Did somebody slip something into your blood this
morning?"
"I should have..." His gaze snapped up.
"Wait. What?"
"Sex," she explained, in case he’d hit his head
or something on the way over
here. He wasn’t making any sense. "The curse?
Perfect happiness? Why would you
think I wouldn’t be happy about that?"
Oh, God... the curse. He’d forgotten all about it. And that
meant she didn’t
know...
Angel gently took hold of her hands and looked her
straight in the eyes. "No,
Buffy. I’m not talking about that." He steeled
himself, knowing that the
momentary nightmare he’d just imagined may very well
still come to pass. But he
owed her the truth. Whether she said so aloud or not,
she’d developed an
inexplicable, deep respect and affection for his grandchilde toward the end of
his life, and carried enormous guilt that he had died for
her cause. She
deserved this measure of peace, whatever came after.
Whatever Angel might lose
because of it.
"It’s Spike. Buffy... he’s alive."
~
Watching her with Spike through the observation window in
Intensive Care sparked
a sensory memory of Hell, in Angel. Of pain so deep, so
sharp, with no ease or
end in sight, death seemed a welcome relief. Or at least,
that’s how he felt
now... a visceral recollection of unending torment.
A few hours ago, his greatest concern was how to gently
ease Buffy into the
notion that they might finally consummate this new phase
of their relationship
with even a modicum of class. And now...
Now his heart was ripping wide open and spilling his unlife’s blood onto the
sterile hospital floor. Now he was entertaining thoughts
of how pleasant it
would be to rip Spike’s head off with his bare hands and
not even bother to glut
on the blood. He caught himself unconsciously noting the
location of the nearest
surgical supply room – one of the finest sources of
torture devices in the
universe. He wondered absently if he would leave the body
there for the nurses –
or Buffy herself – to find, or take the time to haul the
bits of scrawny carcass
down to the boiler room and watch them sizzle and burn.
Who would question the
disappearance of an already dead vampire? And what could
they do to him, the CEO
of LA’s Wolfram & Hart office, if they did?
Ex-vampire, he reminded himself.
In other words, Angel was quickly losing his grip on what
scant shreds remained
of his sanity.
But in his defense, he hadn’t committed any of those
acts. In fact, when the
initial shock wore off and he’d realized he was staring
at Spike’s *human* body
there on the floor of the White Room, he had
instinctively called Grant General
and demanded they send their Wolfram and Hart-sponsored
Med-Vac to transport
them to the trauma unit. He had waited until the doctors
were sure Spike was
going to survive before he broke the news to Buffy. He
had only hesitated 287
times on his way to the school. He had even brought her
back to the hospital
himself when she insisted she needed to go.
Now he waited, watching her watch Spike... watching her
hold his unresponsive
hand the way Angel so often did Cordelia’s
when he was feeling lost or unsteady.
Was Buffy feeling unsteady? Didn’t she know that if she
only reached out for
him, he would shore her up without a moment’s hesitation?
Had he been absent
from her life for so long that turning to him was less
automatic than leaning on
a creature that had once been her mortal enemy?
He had no answer to those or any of a million other
questions that spun through
his mind. Hence, his current state of near-insanity.
"The doctors indicate that other than slight
malnutrition and a melatonin
deficiency, he’s in perfect health," Wesley reported
quietly, as much in
deference to his friend’s obvious pain as to honor the
quiet sanctity of the
hospital. "He’ll need a great deal of rest, and
possibly some physical therapy,
but he should be ready to be discharged in a few days.
Assuming he regains
consciousness, that is."
"He will," was all Angel said in response.
After all, *he* had, when he came
back from Hell. Because of her...
Buffy finally came out of the room to join them in the
hallway, but the look on
her face told them clearly that she was nowhere near
present.
"He’s really alive," she said from that great
spiritual distance, "It’s really
him."
Wesley nodded. "Yes. So all the evidence thus far
indicates."
She turned back to the window, crossing her arms
defensively over her chest as
she always did when she was upset, shutting Angel out.
He stepped away, unable to force himself to go on
watching his worst nightmare
coming to pass before his eyes.
"Will he wake up?" she asked.
The tremor of emotion in her voice... the effort she was
making to veil the
desperate hope and fear she was feeling... ripped him
apart.
He couldn’t take it. With one long, last look at Buffy’s
profile in the dim
lights of the machinery, he turned and left without a
sound.
"There’s no physical reason why he shouldn’t,"
Wesley told her, casting a
moment’s worried glance at Angel’s drawn countenance
disappearing behind the
elevator doors. "His vitals are surprisingly
strong."
"This isn’t possible," Buffy insisted, even in
the face of several million
dollars worth of irrefutable scientific evidence.
"It can’t be. The Hellmouth
collapsed with him inside. And he was on fire when
I..."
Wesley had a sinking sensation that he might have an idea
what was happening,
but kept it to himself. "We aren’t certain what
happened. But the DNA samples,
compared to the records from the Initiative, confirm that
this is, indeed,
Spike."
"And human," she added, giving him a look of
desperate confusion. "But why? Why
him? Why now?"
His heart squeezed tightly in sympathy for her, despite
his instinctive drive to
rise in Angel’s defense. It was easy to forget,
sometimes, that Buffy was so
very young... had lost so much and had so little in her
life she could depend
on… when she was usually so cheerful and strong. "I
know this must be difficult
for you," he offered, laying a gentle hand on her
fine shoulder.
"Difficult?" she chuckled bitterly, "No,
changing spark plugs with your *teeth*
is difficult, Wesley. This is..."
"Something else entirely, of course," he
agreed.
Buffy looked back into the virtual fish tank that was the
intensive care unit at
Spike’s pale, still form. He still looked just the same.
His hair, the chiseled
lines of his face...
How many times had she wished she could have just one
more conversation with
him? To settle once and for all everything that had
happened between them. For
years, she had buried that irrational yearning...
alongside so many others. He
had become just another name she sobbed in her
nightmares.
And now... after all this time... a second chance.
*Another* of her infrequent
wishes come true. After all, who had time to waste
wanting things that could
never be?
But she wanted so badly to tell him what he had truly
helped her find. Helped
her learn about herself. Who she was... what she needed.
She wanted to
acknowledge what he had done for her, what he had become,
in a more genuine
manner than her lame, last-minute attempt to give him
something to take with him
into death. She wanted to tell him that she understood,
that she was grateful,
even if forgiveness and love were never really there.
Angel always counseled
that forgiveness wasn’t something to seek or give, but
just a mirage to start a
reluctant traveler on a long, hard journey that never
really came to an end.
Thinking of him, she looked back suddenly, and realized
that he wasn’t there
behind her anymore. "Oh, God, Angel..." she
gasped, "He must think..."
Wesley made an attempt to comfort her. "I’m sure he
understands, Buffy." Which
wasn’t exactly the truth. He knew Angel *should*
understand -- and most likely
would, in time. But right now...
"No," she searched frantically up and down the
hall, reaching inside her for
that tingle that told her a vampire – her vampire – was
near. Nothing. "He
doesn’t. I have to go." She sprinted toward the
exit, forgoing the wait for the
elevator and plunging into the staircase instead.
Wesley watched her vanish, saying a silent prayer for
them all before he turned
back to his vigil at the window. "I believe we have
a very long night ahead of
us," he murmured to the sleeping ex-vampire.
"And many arduous days to come
after."
He settled into one of the hard plastic chairs and waited
for the answers to
their many questions. One way or the other, Angel would
want to know.
~
Angel most decidedly did not want to know.
He heard her coming just as he reached the car, only a
hair’s breath before she
grabbed his arm, when it was far too late for a clean
getaway.
"Angel..."
He had known it, that last night in Sunnydale.
The half-defensive, evasive way
she responded to his questions. The scent of him
streaming from her clothes, her
hair, her skin... He’d felt it in his heart, known it in
the marrow of his
bones, and yet, he believed her when she told him it
wasn’t true.
Of course she would have come to... care for Spike. How
could she not? He had
been there through all the years after Angel abandoned
her. Stood beside her in
spite of his instincts… his very nature. In spite of his
fears, he had supported
her. Said he loved her... and more importantly, showed
it.
Unlike himself.
And now Spike was human – yet another test that Angel had
failed.
"How is he?" he asked, keeping his back to her.
She stopped pulling at him, but didn’t let go of his
coat. "What are you doing?"
"I’m going home. It’s been a long day," he
replied flatly, refusing to allow
even a drop of the rage and pain gutting him to leak into
his voice. "I wanted
to know his status first."
"Okay. I’ll go with you. I can fill you in on the
way." Before she could move to
the passenger’s side of his car, he held up a hand,
effectively restraining her.
"No."
Buffy eased away and took her fighting stance – the ‘men
are stupid’ kind, not
the killing demons kind. Though in this case, the two
weren’t so very far apart.
"The same," she answered his first question,
thinking that was what he was
waiting for. "The specialist isn’t really sure if
he’ll be as intact emotionally
and mentally as he is physically. They still don’t know
yet where he’s been, or
how long he was there."
Slowly, Angel turned, and Buffy instinctively took a step
away from his look of
revulsion – a mask so cold, so full of hate, she was
pretty sure even Angelus
didn’t have it in his repertoire. "I was hoping for
something more along the
lines of ‘fine.’ Or preferably, ‘dead’."
"What is the matter with you? Why are you acting
like I’ve done something wrong?
Look..." she took a step toward him. "I’m sorry
I freaked out like I did. It’s
just... it’s so hard to believe..."
"I’m not angry with you. I knew how you would
react."
For a moment, she thought of kicking him, just to change
his distasteful
expression. "Your version back at my place was a
little melodramatic, don’t you
think?"
He closed his eyes. "Maybe. But I’m prepared for the
worst."
Buffy stared at him, unable to believe what was coming
out his mouth. "You mean
*were*, right? You were prepared for the worst."
He held her gaze evenly. "Lilah
said their guest would teach me a lesson I
didn’t want to learn. I can’t think of anything I want to
learn less."
"So, what, you think I’m going to run off with
*Spike*? God! This is sure a
healthy, mature relationship marked with honesty and
trust we've got here! Is
this another ‘do as I say, not as I do’ thing? Because I
seem to remember you
telling me that we don’t get to pick and choose who we
help based on whether or
not we like them, or whether they deserve it! Isn’t that
what you preached about
Faith? And now all of a sudden, because it’s Spike, that
doesn’t count anymore?
You’ve lost it!"
‘YES!' he wanted to scream at her. ‘I have! And when your
bleach-blond fucktoy
walks out of that hospital, he’d better damn well hit the
ground RUNNING!’
Instead, he asked, his voice steady as a rock. "So
this is just duty, is it? Can
you honestly tell me that you don’t love him?"
Her already miserable scowl darkened. "What kind of
question is that? I love
*you*!"
"That’s not what I asked you."
She turned away, unable to take the cold steel in his
eyes any longer. "That ’s
not fair. You can’t ask me a question you don’t really
want an answer to and
then punish me for it afterward. That’s *my* game, and
you can’t sucker a pro,
Angel."
He watched the tension ripple through the lean muscles of
her back with a pang
of longing that almost doubled him over.
"You’re right," he admitted, "It’s not
fair. I’m sorry, Buffy. No one blames you
for caring about Spike. I certainly can’t. But that
doesn’t make it any easier
to accept. Now he’s back, and you still can’t answer a
very simple question," he
pointed out, more gently now, a softening he hadn’t
intended, but couldn’t help
in the face of her pain. "So that means either our
relationship is about to get
very, very complicated, or very simple, very
quickly."
Her hurt gaze snapped up. "It is NOT! Spike or no
Spike, he has nothing to do
with you and me!"
"No? Then ‘No Spike’." He demanded, already
knowing her response. And realizing
how unfair and impossible the request was – for both of
them.
"He’s my friend, Angel. I can’t just turn my back on
him, especially now. You
know what this feels like – to be gone one minute, and
the next, all the noise
and stink and pain of this world is crashing into you
again? I know you do! So
do I! You can’t really remember what that felt like, and
not want to help him!"
"Yes, I can," he replied simply to her
impassioned plea. "And in point of fact,
I don’t have even an inkling of desire to do anything but
send him straight back
to Hell, where he belongs."
Buffy startled at his harsh words. "You don’t mean
that. This is what you do,
Angel! This is who you are!" She gestured wildly at
the hospital above them.
"Saving souls, right? Lost souls? They don’t get any
more lost than Spike is
right now!"
He searched deeply into her eyes, but just couldn’t be
certain what he saw
there. Was it the natural defense of a friend? The need
to do the right thing?
Something more? He discovered that she was right – he
didn’t want to know. "I
can’t, he said, "More, I won’t."
This was a side of her lover she had never seen before.
Not broken and sad, not
cold, razor-edged psychotic evil, just... nothing. Like
he didn’t care. She
wasn’t liking the feeling of the wall he’d suddenly built
around himself. She’d
been on the other side of that barrier, hiding from the
pain and fear of losing
the people she cared about.
Well, she wouldn’t go there. Ever again. "Fine. You
do what you have to do,
then, and so will I."
With that, Buffy turned on her heel and raced back into
the hospital, heartbreak
dogging her steps.
It was better this way, Angel tried to convince himself
as she ran away. Buffy
needed the chance to find her own answers. Her own
understanding. And when she
did, then he would take her assurances seriously. But
either way, right or
wrong, he had no intention of setting a single foot in
that hospital again.
~
He didn’t recall ever actually eating cotton, but somehow
the dusty, dried out
taste in his mouth was familiar, and cotton was the first
analogy that came to
mind. Old, bone dry, rotten, stinking, 6000 year-old
cotton.
Oh, right. Thirst. And what the Hell was going on with
his vision? There was a
whole lot of grey, accented with some vague blobs of
colors, but that was it. He
struggled to pry his eyes open further, find something to
focus on that might be
a good foothold on sanity...
The world tilted, then cleared a bit, and suddenly... she
was there. Right next
to him, real as you please, like she sat in hospital
rooms waiting for him to
wake up all the time.
"Slayer?" he croaked, cleared his throat and
made another attempt. "You die
again too?"
Buffy shook her head as she picked up the pitcher from
the nightstand, poured a
tall glass of water, and moved to his side to hold the
straw to his mouth.
"You’re not dead..." she informed him,
“Anymore.”
Spike sucked down the whole glass in a couple of gulps,
then promptly spit most
of it out again.
"Like drinkin’ motor
oil," he complained, wondering why his voice sounded so
weak and funny. Why he felt shaky and sick all over. What
little movement he
could manage was heavy and slow, like pulling his way
through molasses.
"It’s got electrolytes or something in it. The
doctor says you need it to build
up your strength." She reclaimed her seat. "How
do you feel?"
Spike took a moment to consider his response before he
found the appropriate
one. "Like pureed dog shit."
Buffy regarded him closely, her face unreadable. And for
the first time since
they’d known each other, he could gain no clues to what
she might be hiding from
her scent – because she didn’t have one to speak of.
Which was just another part
of a growing suspicion he had that something was off on a
colossal scale, here.
"Do you remember anything? How you got back?"
She was asking – which sounded an
awful lot like mumbling. "Where you were?"
He shook his head. "Just impressions. A whole lot of
nothing, then bright light,
and..." his brow furrowed in confusion. "Angel
yelling. Did I really hear Angel
yelling?"
"Probably," Buffy replied with a sigh.
"Christ, I am in Hell," he moaned. "If I’m
not dead, what the flying fuck is
wrong with me? Can barely move. Can’t see for shit. Can’t
hear. I hurt all over
like I got put through a meat grinder." He trained
his eyes on the Slayer once
more. "What’s going on, Buffy?"
She swallowed hard and glanced away for a moment before
forcing out lightly,
"Sounds like you’ve got a bad case of humanity, Mr.
‘The Bloody’."
"I’ve got a..." he began. Then, he turned his
head to regard the fuzzy outlines
of lights and machinery clogging the room. The barely
audible beep... beep...
beep... that told him everything he didn’t want to know.
He closed his eyes and
commented, "Fuck."
It all made the kind of twisted sense that could send a
man running in front of
a speeding train. Only now, he realized that kind of
dramatic gesture would
actually make him *dead* -- in a far more permanent, far
less fun way than he
was used to.
"I can’t believe I’m sodding
human," he mumbled just before he slipped back into
unconsciousness, as though he’d discovered he’d
contracted some horrible disease
and just couldn’t handle the news.
Which, Buffy imagined as she watched him succumb to his
exhaustion, it must seem
like to him.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Five
"We’ve arranged housing in the complex outside
obviously inattentive Angel. "He’ll have a
round-the-clock nurse for as long as
he needs it. Once he’s regained his bearings a bit, we
can consider education,
employment and the like. The Documents Division has
already begun creating his
papers. He’ll have a new identity by close of business
today, and we can fill in
any backstory he requires at a
later date."
"He has an education," Angel recalled absently,
"A top notch one at that."
Wesley drew away a little, concerned at the return of
Angel’s strange, detached
demeanor from recent times past. "Ah, well, that’s a
start then. Although I
imagine he’d have difficulty convincing any legitimate
employer that he earned
his degree some 120 years ago."
The vampire didn’t seem to hear him. Angel looked as
though his mind was
anywhere but present. Seeing him slip away like this
frightened Wesley more
deeply than anything else that had happened in the past
few, trying days.
"Angel," he called softly to draw his
attention.
"Hmm? Right. It sounds like you’ve taken care of
everything. Thank you, Wesley."
He praised his friend and turned toward the window behind
him – his security
blanket.
"Don’t dismiss me like I’m one of your
hirelings," Wesley warned. "You’re
obviously in great distress, and I think perhaps this is
one of those times
we’ve discussed where interfering in one another’s
business is the best course
of action. So I find myself forced to ask that you tell
me what’s bothering
you."
"Nothing," Angel assured him, but off his
friend’s disbelieving silence, added,
"I understand you’re worried. But you don’t need to
be. I’m fine."
His lifeless, used-car-salesman-from-Hell tone told
Wesley that Angel was,
indeed, lying. "Yes, I see. And the fact that you
haven’t spoken to Buffy since
Spike’s return doesn’t trouble you at all?"
Angel tensed visibly, but retained his cool façade.
"She said she needed time.
It’s not my place to decide how much."
Wesley knew that wasn’t what had happened. Buffy had told
him about Angel’s
refusal to help Spike, and her own reaction to it.
"That’s very reasonable of
you," he commented with a sneer, "Shall I tell
you what I think about the
matter?"
"No."
"All right, then, why don’t I put it into one simple
word? I think of you as a
brother, Angel, so you know that I say this from a place
of deepest respect and
affection: martyr."
Angel started as if Wesley had slapped him, and spun to
face the other man once
more. "I beg your pardon?"
"I called you a martyr. For that describes your
behavior to a ‘T’. It is your
mission – for whatever Fate’s twisted reason – to help
Spike. And yet you turn
your back on that for some spiteful, selfish – and from
what I have seen and
heard, unfounded – jealous snit. Have you even made an
effort to speak to Buffy
about this?"
He watched his words register in his friend’s dark eyes –
all the answer he
truly needed – but they elicited no further response.
Without a word, Angel got
up and left the office.
"Damn it," Wesley cursed.
~
Of course, Wes was right. He was being petty and selfish.
Stupid, and okay, a
martyr as well. But what else could he do besides give
Buffy the room she needed
to think things through? He should have given it to her a
month ago, when she
first asked for it.
But no... he’d been selfish then, too. And now they were
both suffering for it.
The other facet Wesley – and Buffy before him – was
correct about was his Duty.
Not his job, the day to day grind, the annoying
interference from the Senior
Partners or the endless meetings and mountains of
paperwork, but his *purpose*.
His Calling. To help, even when it was the last thing he
wanted to do. Maybe
because it was the last thing he wanted to do. That was
the real – if unintended
– lesson he was starting to learn from this fiasco.
He was duty-bound to help Spike... at least to keep him
out of Wolfram & Hart’s
clutches. Because certainly, if they had gone to the
trouble of bringing him
back (if it was trouble, for them) then they no doubt had
plans for the
ex-vampire that were in direct opposition to his mission
statement.
And though he might very well still lose Buffy in the end
even if he became more
involved, at least he would be there. He could make sure
she didn’t get ambushed
by something she wasn’t expecting when she was
vulnerable.
The elevator opened, and Angel found himself in the White
Room for the second
time that week. What better place to begin looking for
answers than the scene of
the crime, so to speak?
Naturally, Gwen was already there waiting for him, this
time clad in the
tightest, most revealing red catsuit
he had ever seen. In fact, it wasn’t so
much a "suit" as a few strips of strategically
placed crimson leather.
After wiping the unconscious metaphorical drool from his
chin, Angel wondered –
wasn’t head-to-toe leather a little... sweaty to be
comfortable? The chafing
alone...
"Hey, Big Guy," she greeted him in her
characteristic sarcastic purr, "We
weren’t expecting to see you again so soon."
"But you were expecting me," he replied, all
business. "And you know what I
want."
The brunette nodded. "We do. But... I don’t think we
have what you’re looking
for. We didn’t have anything to do with bringing Spike
back. We don’ t know why
he’s here, or what you’re supposed to do about it."
Her gaze ticked away as she
listened to something Angel couldn’t hear, and she
smiled. "Gunn says they’re
not a damn travel agency. This room is just a convenient,
all-purpose portal
that someone chose to put him through. Probably so you
would find him."
"So the Senior Partners didn’t bring him back?"
Angel queried, determined to get
at least the practical answers, even if the emotional
ones had to wait.
The thief – now messenger for the self-exiled Ra-Tet – shrugged. "It’s one of
those ‘mysterious ways’ things, I guess. We may be at the
top of the sun-worship
ladder, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got all the answers.
What I can tell you
is... you need to look a little deeper inside yourself to
find out what his
return means. Look at the past. Pay attention to your
dreams, your desires, your
fear and your gut. Because Spike is only one piece of a
much bigger puzzle that
you’ve already begun, and only you can put the rest of
the pieces together."
Angel sighed. "I’d forgotten how annoying cryptic
messengers can be."
"Hey, I’m just doing my job," Gwen explained,
"They’d rather not be involved in
this at all, but since the last little Eternal Night
incident, anything that
threatens the balance of Light & Dark in this dimension
sorta piques their
interest."
He frowned. "I thought that was already fixed. The
vortex Buffy and I closed..."
"The hole in reality was a symptom, not the disease.
One kiss can’t make
*everything* all better, you know. Something has done
some major damage to the
cosmic scales. Only you guys can figure out what, and how
to fix it. Spike's
resurrection is just another clue. So... start there and
work your way inward."
"I don’t..." he stammered in confusion.
"We don’t have any idea what’s going on
here. What does Spike coming back – and human, no less –
have to do with the
balance of power in the universe?"
"Don’t ask me. I’m just the messenger," she
replied. "But maybe you should think
about reading that scroll again. And stop running away
from what needs to be
done."
Then, in a flash of blinding light, Angel found himself
in the corridor outside
Spike’s hospital room.
So much for never setting foot in here again. Angel
almost preferred the cryptic
hints – those, at least, he could ignore. As usual, he
felt a wave of resentment
at the sensation of being moved around like a pawn on
some cosmic chessboard. It
made all he and the others had done to assure free will
in the world seem a
little pointless.
He took a deep, steadying breath, and pushed open the
door.
Buffy and Spike glanced up from their poker game as he
entered the room. Her
mouth dropped wide open in surprise, then grew into a
bright smile as she got up
and dashed forward to grab Angel in a fierce embrace.
"I knew you’d change your mind," she cried,
nearly breathless with relief, "I
knew it!"
Angel held her tightly, soaking up the feel of her in his
arms. A few days
without her presence in his life had turned it into a
fresh little slice of
Hell, and the deceptively simple remedy washed through
him, draining away all
his tension in an instant.
Until his eyes met Spike’s over Buffy’s shoulder. He drew
away to serve the
ex-demon with a glare.
"Spike," he greeted unenthusiastically.
"Siegfried," Spike replied in the same manner.
The way the air crackled with their tension, Buffy
expected them to draw on each
other any second, like a couple of gunfighters out of
olden days. The only
atmosphere they needed was some prairie dust and maybe a
catchy Wild West theme
song.
Had she really be hoping Angel would change his mind?
"Last time I saw you, you were tied to a chair, shot
full of arrows," Angel
recalled, "It was a good look for you."
"Yeah? Well, the last time I saw you, you had your
tongue down my girlfriend ’s
throat."
"I was *not* your girlfriend," Buffy reminded
him. "Ever."
Angel shot her a smirk that said, ‘See? I told you.’
"This is just stupid," she went on,
"Whatever happened then is totally
irrelevant to now. So can we all act like grown... beings
for a change?"
Spike shrugged nonchalantly. "I didn’t say a
thing."
Angel simply glowered. As usual, the rewards for doing
the right thing were rich
and plentiful. Not that he had essentially chosen to do
the right thing. "I came
to see how he was doing."
"Right as rain, mate," the blond replied,
stretching dramatically, then pounding
on his chest. "Healthy as a *human being* can be, in
fact. Thanks for stopping
by. Now sod off."
The elder man growled under his breath. "Call my
office when you’re released. A
driver will come to collect you and drive you to your
apartment. Let him know
anything you need, and he’ll arrange it for you. Then
stop by my office, and we
can decide what happens next."
Spike pushed himself forward in his chair, demonstrating
for the first time that
he was clad in a cheap set of silly, blue polka-dotted
pajamas, which gave Angel
a very small momentary happy. "Now hold on just a
minute there, Sunshine. I’m
not going anywhere having anything to do with your
self-righteous ass. I’d
rather live in a refrigerator box."
"You’ll go where I say you go," Angel informed
him. "Wolfram & Hart brought you
back from whatever Hell you were burning in, so we keep
you where we want you."
"LIKE HELL!" Spike shouted, leaping to his
feet. "I didn’t ask to come back, so
I owe you lot FUCK-ALL! You can take your indentured
servitude and shove it up
your fat arse!"
Angel took a menacing step toward him, but Buffy shoved
him back.
"Stop it! Both of you! God!" She had a sudden
flashback to the confrontation
between Angel and Riley back in Sunnydale
a few years ago, and took a moment to
surreptitiously scope Angel for a gun.
"Angel..." she put a hand on his chest
and moved him bodily back toward the door. He kept his
eyes nailed on Spike
until Buffy spoke again. "He already has a place to
stay. And a job, if he wants
it. You don’t have to worry."
Angel stared incredulously at her. "Is that supposed
to make me feel better? It
isn’t Spike that I’m worried about."
"What? Why? I could kick his ass when he was a
vampire. Now he’s just a guy.
There’s no danger here. Besides –"
"If you say he’s changed," Angel interrupted
with a hiss, "I’ll skin him alive
right here and now."
"Fine. But at the very least..." she drew him a
little further away, and dropped
her voice below human hearing level. "He’s confused
and sick and disoriented. I
think he’s having a hard time dealing with his senses
dulling. He should be
around people who know him. Who care about him."
"People who... have you lost your mind? Who
*cares*?" he shouted, "He’s got an
undoubtedly nefarious purpose here, and I’m going to find
out what it is. I’m
keeping him right where I can see him!"
"He does have a purpose! He’s ALIVE!" she
shouted back.
Angel reeled as though she’d slapped him. He stared at
her in shock for a full
ten seconds before he regained his composure. "We
don’t know where he’s been,
Buffy – or what he *really* is now. Can you truly tell me
you think it ’s a good
idea to set him loose in a building full of innocent
girls?"
Buffy wasn’t so sure that *all* of them were innocent –
there was that incident
a few weeks ago with the fire ladder and the beer cans –
but she figured now
wasn’t the time. "He’s not going to hurt anyone. And
I can keep any eye on him
just fine if he’s at the school."
"I don’t like it, Buffy. This whole situation has
disaster written all over it,"
he insisted, "The Ra-Tet
has left this dimension, and their messenger says
something bad is coming. I’m thinking it’s him. He comes
with me."
"Uh, hello!" came the forgotten third party’s
voice from the other side of the
room.
"Okay, Angel, now you’re completely overreacting.
He’s *human*."
"Overreacting? You don’t know what the Senior
Partners are capable of! Or Spike
himself, for that matter."
"HEY!" the topic of their debate bellowed,
finally deciding to make his opinion
on the small matter of his entire *life* heard, "I
am right bloody here, you
know! I may be deaf, blind and half-crippled, but *I*
still decide where the
bloody Hell I go!"
The Slayer and vampire both stared at him.
"You two may think I’m some pawn you can toss around
the board however you see
fit, but I’m here to tell you that’s BULLOCKS! I’m not bloody
well..." he swayed
dizzily and sunk into his chair, drained. "Christ.
I’m gonna be sick."
Buffy shot Angel a glare, grabbing the plastic emesis
basin from the nightstand,
and held it for him as he lost all of the gelatin he’d
managed to ingest that
day.
Angel watched the tenderness with which Buffy attended
Spike, holding the basin
and stroking his head while he wretched, and felt more
than a little ill
himself. He used his blazing hatred as a shield against
falling apart.
"You’re going where I tell you to go, if I have to
tie you up and drag you there
myself," he declared, his voice frigid with the same
cold he felt in his heart.
"You’re a ‘guest’ of Wolfram & Hart, and you’re
not getting anywhere near Buffy
or her students."
Her furious scowl was a knife ripping through his already
wailing soul. "You
have no right," she hissed. "He’s a human
being."
Angel steeled himself against her anger, and used every
ounce of his strength to
swallow the pain and loss that threatened to consume him.
"I didn’t choose this
job, but I have every intention of seeing it through. I’m
going to talk to the
doctor. You’d better be ready when I get back."
Without waiting for a reply, Angel spun and rushed from
the room, leaving the
scene of horror and agony disguised as kindness and
affection behind him. In the
hall, he sagged against the nurse’s station, and choked
back the tears that
threatened before finally collecting himself and
gesturing to the nurse on duty.
"I need to talk to Spike’s doctor," he said,
experiencing a whole new depth of
irony at his use of the word ‘need’. "Now."
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Six
In the end, Angel "won" the battle of wills.
The doctor hesitated to discharge
Spike at all due to his weakened condition, and only the
promise of top-notch
private care – courtesy of the hospital's most generous
corporate benefactors –
convinced him.
Buffy continued refusing to leave Spike's side, certain
not only that the former
vampire had an inherent right to choose his own fate, but
that Angel's evil
bosses had something malevolent up their sleeves. And
when whatever the Senior
Partners had planned went down, she was going to be there
to stop it. To protect
Spike from something he wasn't in any condition to
fight... and to protect Angel
from the exact same thing.
His rage was like another person in the limo with them as
they rode to the new
apartment in
from them, his fathomless gaze nailed on the passing
scenery. He hadn't made eye
contact with her even once since they left the hospital,
although she
occasionally caught him sneaking angry glances at her and
Spike when he thought
she wasn't looking.
It still completely stunned her that Angel had taken such
an unreasonably rigid
attitude toward her now human ex-lover. It wasn't that
she didn't get it – after
all, Angel had never exactly been patient, diplomatic guy
when it came to her
other relationships. And of course, she knew full well
that he and Spike had a
history of animosity going back a hundred years or more
that had nothing to do
with her at all. But Angel was always the one to suck it
up – whatever it was –
and soldier on in spite of his personal feelings. Hadn't
he been the one who
kept trying to convince her that they could – and should
– make their
relationship work even in the face of incredible odds?
Hadn't he been the one
who'd torn both their hearts out when he left Sunnydale, because he'd known that
ultimately, it was the best thing for both of them at the
time? He was the one
always so dedicated to doing the right thing no matter
how much it hurt.
So why couldn't he do that now?
No matter how hard she thought about it, the whole thing
just didn't wash. And
if Angel refused to help Spike and find the answers they
needed, it was left to
her to do it. For all of their sakes.
The building was a marvel of stone and glass – an
ultramodern complex with
apartments on the top ten stories, offices on the second
and shops on the ground
floor. Buffy gaped at the vast, elegant entryway, with
its marble floors and
dark, rich colors, crystal chandeliers and antique
tapestries. It reminded her
of Angel's taste: subtle, classy and dramatic.
They passed by a security desk without pause as the four
heavily armed guards
recognized Angel, and made their way past the public
elevators to another
corridor. Angel opened the door at the end with a passcard and a retinal scan
that would make the Initiative green with envy. That
little journey led them to
another elevator secured with a digital combination lock,
which, once they
stepped inside the glass box, whisked them straight to
the top of the building.
The penthouse was divided into two cavernous apartments
with what appeared to be
glass walls like those in Angel's office, leading out to
a vast enclosed terrace
with an Olympic-sized pool and a fairytale vista of the
entire city beyond.
Spike whistled as he took it in, expressing her opinion
perfectly. "So I got a
choice between this and some crumbling old dung heap of a
school dorm, eh?" he
said, giving Buffy a look. "I gotta say, Slayer, I
think giving up my free will
might be a damn fair trade here."
Buffy scowled at him, but said nothing.
Angel directed the small crowd of hovering servants to
set things up, and then
turned to face the pair still waiting by the door.
"You should have everything you need here, Spike.
The phone's programmed with
keys to call security, housekeeping, the concierge, my
office and my cell.
You're not to leave the building without me for any
reason, and I've made
certain security is aware of that proviso. Any
questions?"
Spike plunked down on the overstuffed black leather couch
and kicked his
spanking new Docs up on the chrome and glass coffee
table. "Yeah. Where's my
electronic tracking bracelet with the handy remote
instant-death-by-electrocution feature?"
Angel's expression didn't flicker. "That can easily
be arranged."
Buffy cringed as the two men faced off for the second
time that day, and
couldn't help recalling a foolish idea she had once about
tossing them into a
cage (naked and treated generously with oil) and letting
them duke it out once
and for all. Unfortunately, now that Spike was human, the
only thing that fun
little scenario would accomplish was getting him
violently dismembered.
How could she possibly keep these two from beating the
crap out of each other
while they figured out what was happening, and what was
coming next?
"Aw, now, Peaches... is that any way to treat an
honored guest?" the blond asked
with a nasty smirk. "Especially since we've got so
much more in common now than
before."
It was impossible to miss his pointed look at her. Buffy
grimaced, ready to head
off the inevitable explosion. Angel didn't let her down.
"I used `guest’ in its loosest possible definition.
And I sure as Hell *never*
said you were honored," he snarled. "As for
what we have in common, it remains
at less than *nothing*."
He moved toward Spike, and Buffy took her cue, stepping
in front of Angel and
holding him back as his growl grew more menacing.
"Okay. Angel, maybe you should be somewhere that's
else for a while until Spike
gets settled in. And you take some time to find your
marbles," she suggested.
"It's not going to do anyone any good if one of you
ends up dead."
"Care to wager on that?" Spike inquired. It was
the first thing Angel had agreed
with him on all day – because he would most assuredly
feel better once he tore
the man to bloody ribbons with his bare hands and danced
a jig on the gory
remains.
He took a deep breath and wrestled down the surging
demonic instinct to kill --
horribly, painfully and slowly – and glanced at his
watch. "I have a meeting
with a client anyway." Without looking at Buffy, he
turned and left.
She was right behind him as the elevator opened.
"We need to talk about this, Angel," she
insisted gently.
He paused, but didn't turn around. "Fine.
Talk."
"Not now. Not here. Can we meet tonight after
patrol?"
Angel closed his eyes, willing himself to stay strong in
the face of current
events. "I'm busy tonight."
Buffy's heart wrenched in her chest. "Oh. Okay.
Then... when?"
"There's really nothing to talk about, is there? You
wanted me to help Spike, so
I am. What else is there to say?"
"How about the fact that holding him prisoner while
we wait to see what your
bosses have in store for him is wrong?" she
suggested. "How is he safe here
alone?"
Angel turned slowly to look at her, his face blank.
"There's enough security and
magickal safeguards in this
building to fend off all the hosts of Hell."
"That's not what I mean, and you know it. He
shouldn't be by himself right now,"
she reiterated.
His gaze locked to hers. "Then stay with him, if
you're so concerned."
Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. "I can't be here all
the time. I have to patrol
tonight."
"That's fine," Angel replied as he turned back
to the elevator, "I'm moving in
to the other penthouse. I was serious when I told you I
was going to keep an eye
on him. I'll be working from here until this is
finished."
He gave her one last, hard look as the elevator doors
closed. "Watch your back,
Buffy."
When he was gone, she kicked the elevator doors with a
ferocious grunt, just for
the some tiny sense of satisfaction, before she returned
to the apartment.
~
"I can't believe you're as surprised as you are,
Buffy," Xander told her when
she called the school to let them know she wouldn't be
able to take her classes
that afternoon. He and Andrew had just returned from a
black market artifacts
scavenging mission in Hong King, where they had spent
what little capital they'd
gathered retrieving Watchers' Council documents. "He
wanted to kill me once
-–okay, more than once, but – that one time just for
*dancing* with you. Imagine
how he feels about Spike."
Buffy sighed as she dipped her aching feet into the pool.
Spike was busy with
the nurse inside -– whom she noticed was tall, gorgeous
and obscenely
big-breasted –having physical therapy or plasma
treatments or something. "I get
it. I do. But... shouldn't we be putting away that
personal stuff? At least
until we figure out what all this means?"
Xander laughed. "Oh, grasshopper.
Your understanding of maleness remains so
sadly stunted. Testosterone is the great brain-melter, Buff. You're not gonna
get any logic out of those two anytime in the next
millennium. Look. Maybe it
would be better if a couple of us came over there to keep
him company. That
might at least ease off the jealousy factor.
Theoretically."
"No..." Buffy went on woefully. "I should
stay with him. And besides, I don't
think anything will help at this point. Angel's totally
shut me out. I told him
we should talk about this tonight, but he said he was
`busy’. Which we both know
is crap, because we've been busy *together* since this
started."
"I'll say it again – he's being a guy. But he loves
you. He'll get over it. And
I really can't believe I'm defending Angel."
Buffy almost smiled, but the real deal wouldn't come.
"Just keep researching.
Giles still has all that stuff we found when Angel came
back – maybe that will
help. I'm going to try and get more from Spike."
Xander paused for a moment,
letting all the possible meanings of her statement
sink in before he responded, "Watch yourself, Buffy.
Whatever brought him back,
it can't be good."
"Why does everybody keep saying that? I can handle
Spike and anything else that
happens."
Her oldest friend wasn't so sure. Just because Buffy's
instincts toward the
ex-vampire had been right the last time didn't mean this
wasn't a whole new
ballgame. And considering how hard and how long she had
been repressing her
feelings about him, Xander
doubted she could see the situation clearly at all.
For once, he was on Angel's side. A `Mark This Historic
Date On Your Calendar’
sort of occasion.
"If you say so," he capitulated, "Keep us
up to date."
He hung up and turned to face Giles, Wood and
marking their faces.
"It's worse than we thought," he reported.
"Angel and Buffy have both gone
loco-incommunicado."
Robin got up and began to pace. "Spike is trouble.
Whatever species he is."
"Literally, in this case,"
Giles nodded. "We should never have allowed
ourselves to become complacent after
the vortex was closed. The scroll is clear – there are
many cataclysmic events
ahead that Buffy and Angel must face together. We simply
assumed that once they
broke past their own personal barriers, the rest would
fall into place easily."
"'Ghosts of the past'", Wood quoted, "We
should have known that was more than
just a euphemism for their issues."
Xander leaned wearily against
Buffy's desk. "Does anybody else find it ironic
that we have to focus on fixing Buffy and Angel's
*relationship* to keep the
world safe?"
All three of his companions raised their hands.
"Gives a whole new meaning to `what the world needs
now’, huh?" he sighed.
"What can we do?"
falling apart, sure. But... what about the cataclysmic
part? What's coming that
they can't fight if they're not speaking? Shouldn't we be
getting ready for
that? It's not like all the weird phenomena just stopped
when they got back
together."
"That's true," Robin concurred, "They put
a plug in one leak, but there are
still other cracks in the dam."
"I only wish we knew more about the cause and purpose
of Spike's resurrection,"
Giles put in. "His arrival certainly can't be a
coincidence. Is this one of the
apocalyptic events itself? An accidental result of the
weakening veils between
dimensions? A distraction for Angel and Buffy so they
won't be prepared for
what's next?"
"Well..."
do a Walvan's Litmus spell on
him. That would give us an idea of what kind of
energies are around him. If somebody used dark magicks to bring him back, we'd
at least know that much. And a truth spell to make sure
he tells us everything
he knows – and anything he might not, consciously."
"I don't think Buffy'll go
for that. She's sort of declared herself Spike's
Human Rights Commission representative," Xander informed them.
"She has no choice in the matter," Giles stated
shortly, "It's time that she
takes a hard look at the probability that her stance on
Spike may not be the
healthiest one -- for herself or the world. Willow,
please get to work on
researching that spell. I'm going to call and consult
with Wesley. Robin, would
you be so kind as to take my history class?"
The principal nodded. "Of course."
"Maybe I should head over there and make sure
everything stays murder-free,"
Xander offered, "There's
nothing falling apart around here that won't still be
falling apart tomorrow."
"Take Faith or one of the older girls with you, if
you can," Giles recommended,
"In case there's trouble."
"Done. I'll leave the cell on."
"And Xander..." Giles
called after him. "If anything untoward happens..."
"I'll hit the Bat Signal," he promised, and
headed off.
"We got a Bat Signal? Cool!" Andrew commented
from his eavesdropping place
behind the bookshelf.
~
Angel sat in the limousine outside the building for
nearly an hour, trying to
find the strength to go in and face what he had to do. He
hadn't actually had a
client meeting, of course, but only a desperate desire to
be away from Buffy and
Spike before he really lost it and made things worse than
they already were.
Instead, he'd spent the afternoon in archives reviewing
Spike's file and the
prophecies surrounding the Convergence.
He had attempted to put aside his raging emotions... the
deep loathing and
passionate jealousy. That effort only lasted about
fifteen minutes, but at least
he'd been successful. And the past few hours of reading,
thinking and talking to
Cordy for the second time that
week finally brought him to a place where he
thought he understood why it was so difficult.
His envy of Spike went far beyond simple jealousy of his
former relationship
with Buffy. And his fear stemmed from a place deeper than
the possibility that
Spike had been resurrected for evil purposes. It hit him
when he was re-reading
the passages of the prophecy he had been so sure meant he
and Buffy needed to
get back together – the one they'd come to call the
Eternal Flame scroll. The
passages about their bond, their identities... the ghosts
of the past...
Each one could just as easily be referring to Spike as
himself. After all,
Angel's reunion with Buffy hadn't stopped the chaos of
the Confluence entirely.
In fact, the past week, the time anomalies, magickal accidents and unidentified
demons had steadily been growing worse again. And the
vortex – he and Buffy had
just assumed it was their kiss that had stopped it. But
what if that phenomenon
had only been a sign... the first indication of something
opening the portal to
bring the real Great Warrior back? Spike had fought by
Buffy's side longer than
Angel had. There was definitely a bond between them... a
bond of blood and tears
that all soldiers who faced war together formed. And
fire? Well... from what
little he knew about their physical relationship, there
was definitely heat
involved.
Realizing all that spun his mind in another, even less
pleasant, direction.
Spike had, by virtue of wearing the amulet meant for
Angel, saved humanity. Died
in the service of good. Made the ultimate sacrifice.
And now he was human. It was too perfect to be a
coincidence.
((When the vampire with a soul fulfills his destiny, he
will Shanshu...))
It was that last which finally broke him. Even when he
had consciously set aside
any hope of reward, of some cosmic end zone where he
could lay down his arms and
rest at last... the possibility of it still remained,
buried deep in the
recesses of his battered heart.
Someday, he might be mortal again. Have another chance to
live the kind of life
he'd always dreamed of. A home, a family... Buffy as his
wife, by his side for a
finite span of precious human years.
All those prospects, in a single instant, had ceased to
be his and become
Spike's. Not only had the ex-vampire won a place in
Buffy's heart with his
unshakable loyalty – he could now give her the future
she'd stopped believing
she wanted. That she'd given up to be with him.
It wasn't a matter of giving her time to decide between
the two men she cared
about. It was a matter of him realizing the truth, and
giving her the freedom to
do the same. Angel was, yet again, standing in the way of
Buffy's happiness.
All that was left for him now was to step back and remove
that barrier.
Angel swallowed the bitter agony of his revelation,
pushed it down into the
place where all the billions of others lay, and got out
of the car.
If he was right, this had to be done now, before the next
disaster hit.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Seven
"I dunno," Spike said
to Buffy, "I feel like crap now, sure. But at least I can
actually *taste* the brews and onion rings. And I figure,
once I'm stronger, I
can start training. No reason why 120 years of experience
ought to go down the
drain just because I don't have superpowers
anymore."
"I don't see why not," she agreed without
enthusiasm. "You know all the
technical aspects of fighting. You just need to learn to
use them with normal
strength. Giles and Xander will
help. We all will."
It was impossible for Spike - Now "William Haverton", according to his shiny new
identity - to miss how present Buffy wasn't. The entire
afternoon had gone like
this... small talk punctuated by some awkward quiet,
followed by a bit of
staring into space, and then some unhappy silence for
spice.
"Don't worry, Pet," he assured her.
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy's got the attention span of a
gnat on crystal meth. He'll get
over it."
Her gaze remained locked on the vista of the sparkling LA
skyline, but seemed
farther away than that as she replied, "I don't
know. We never really talked
about..." she faced him once more. "You and
me."
Spike snorted. "Yeah? Well, that makes three of us,
then doesn't it? Not that
it's any of his damn business anyway."
"It *is* his business, Spike. All of this is. He is
right that we don't know why
you're back, or who brought you." She added, more to
herself than anything, "Or
why now?"
The ex-vampire glowered at her. "What, you're the
only one who gets to return
from the dead more than once without a note from the
Almighty?"
She gave him a look. "Don't be stupid. But... there
were consequences to both
times I came back. As... you probably remember."
He tensed, recalling that year he and Buffy spent as...
what? Lovers? Not
hardly. Fuck buddies? Didn't quite fit, so far as the `buddies'
part went. Well,
whatever it was, for all the rocking sex and entertaining
head games, it had
still been the pinnacle of suck, overall.
Look where it had ultimately got him. Soddin'
human.
"Whatever. The fact is, consequences or not, I'm
here, and all of us are just
gonna have to deal with it."
"It's how we deal with it that I'm worried
about," she replied with a sigh.
Spike was hesitant to come any closer to her - he'd been
holding his own
emotions over all of this at bay with what felt like a
wall of Saran Wrap. But
her obvious pain drew him as it always had, and he
figured he owed her some
small measure of comfort for sticking by him at the cost
of her relationship
with Meathead. He rose and came to sit beside her on the
loveseat, glad for the
first time that he could hardly smell anymore. Buffy's
scent had driven him
crazy since the first time he caught it, hunting her in
the Bronze a million
years ago, and that was one more thing he just wouldn't
be able to deal with
right now.
"I'll tell you what," he began, keeping his
tone light. "When I'm a little less
wobbly `round the edges, what's say I bugger out of the
City of
all your problems would be solved."
Her head snapped up to stare at him. "And go where?
Do what? You have no clue
how to make it in the world as a human. Besides... if
Angel and the Senior
Partners want to find you, there's nowhere you can run.
Their reach is pretty
long. Like, interdimensional."
He shrugged. "I went up in flames last time, luv. There's not much I'm afraid of
at this point."
"No. You need to stay here. At least until we find
out what they have planned
for you. I couldn't handle..." she glanced away,
trailing off.
The softness, the disquiet in her voice crumbled his
hard-built bravado. "You
sure that's the only reason you want me to stay?"
It took her a moment to meet his gaze. "I owe
you," she told him simply. "A
lot."
He backed away. "Owe me? You... Have you gone
completely box of rocks?"
"You were there for me when no one else was. You got
a soul for me," she
reminded him softly. "You died for me. So yes, I owe
you."
Spike shoved himself off the couch and stomped across the
living room, staring
out the window for a few moments while he digested what
she was saying... and
found himself horrified. Ironic, considering that once,
he would have cut off
his... arm to hear her say those words.
He finally found the will to confront her. "I didn't
die for you. I died because
it was the right thing to do. And the rest? You don't owe
me, because you never
asked for any of it. In case *you've* forgotten, I spent
the best part of five
years trying to kill you and your mates. The only reason
that changed is because
I didn't have a *choice*! And at the *very* least, I'd
damn well bet that trying
to RAPE YOU pretty much erases any remaining debt,
wouldn't you?"
"What did you just say?" came a dangerous hiss
from the foyer.
Buffy whipped around to find Angel standing in the
shadows of the entry hall,
his face contorted with rage.
"A-Angel..." she stammered, and got up.
Spike stood tall and silent as his grandsire stalked
toward him with death in
his dark eyes. Not his fault the two of them lived in a
damn soap opera... just
his tough luck.
"I ASKED YOU WHAT THE HELL YOU JUST SAID!!!"
the vampire roared.
"You heard what I said. Buffy didn't love me, so I
got it into my head to force
her to," he confessed, fully prepared to die for
that alone.
Angel turned in nightmarish slow motion to face a stunned
Buffy. "Is this true?"
She stared at him, aghast. "It's... it's not what
you..."
"IS. IT. *TRUE*?!"
"I just said it was," Spike cut in, taking the
steps back down into the living
room.
"He didn't, though," Buffy insisted, "I
stopped him."
"You..." Angel sputtered, "YOU STOPPED
HIM??? He ATTACKED you, and because you
happened to be stronger than he is, that makes it all
right?"
"No, but..."
"Hey! Your problem's with me, Angelus, not
her!"
Angel spun at the sound of his voice, and before anyone
could react, he'd
grabbed Spike by the throat and thrown him clear across
the room. He crashed
into the far wall, but never made it to the floor, as
Angel was instantly upon
him once more, in vamp face, pounding the peroxide blond
into a bloody pulp.
Buffy sprinted to them and grabbed Angel by the back of
the coat, but in the
clutches of a berserker demon rage, she couldn't pull him
off.
"STOP IT! YOU'RE KILLING HIM!" she screamed.
Angel shoved her away without pause and slammed Spike's head
three times into
the wall, leaving a dent in the wallpapered sheetrock.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" He
rammed him into the hole once more. "I'LL RIP YOU TO
FUCKING SHREDS!!!"
"Yeah! Do it!" Spike shrieked through the blood
in his mouth, hoping death would
come a little more quickly, this time... and with less
fire. Also that he
wouldn't end up suffering the way he'd seen Angelus make
so many of his victims
suffer - like maybe getting skinned alive or having his wank chopped off and fed
to him. "Go ahead! Snap my neck! Rip my head
off!"
Another heave, and he was flying through the glass door
in the entertainment
center on the other side of the room. But before Angel
could resume his attempt
to beat the bastard to death, Buffy tackled him from
behind, sending him
slamming face down into the floor. Seeing nothing but his
desperate need to
kill, Angel automatically flipped over and drew back for
a punch.
She dropped down onto his chest and pinned both his arms
with her knees.
"STOP THIS! STOP! ANGEL! STOP!" she shouted at
him, then her voice broke.
"Please don't do this. Please..."
Angel morphed back to his human visage as her tears
brought him slowly back to
reality. He blinked at her, still half-blinded by the
violence exploding in his
blood. Afraid he might lose it and try to hit her, he
pushed her off, and got to
his feet, but didn't move either toward her or the still
form crumpled on the
floor nearby. Buffy hurried over to check Spike's pulse.
"He's not dead. His heart's still beating,"
Angel snarled. "Which it shouldn't
be."
Buffy nailed him with a withering glare. "Just call
the nurse."
He crossed his arms over his chest, but didn't move.
"Fine. I'll do it then," she snapped, and
grabbed the phone.
~
While Buffy and the nurse tended to Spike in the bedroom
(God, he could hardly
think those three words together...) Angel called into
the office.
"Mr. Angel's office. Michael speaking."
"Michael. I need you to go down to the archives and
get everything we have on
Spike," he commanded. "And I mean
everything."
"But Sir, I can just call down..." his
assistant began to remind him.
"No. Go down yourself. I don't want anything to
`accidentally' be omitted. I
want the entire file. Bring it to the apartment yourself.
Don't use a courier."
"Of course, Sir. Right away."
He hung up and sank onto the couch just as the doorbell
rang. For a moment, he
was confused - even Michael wasn't that fast. He got up
and took a glance at the
security console in the foyer.
"Oh, great. Just what I needed," he grumbled,
but opened the door.
Xander stepped inside, agape in
the same fashion that he had been since he set
foot in the building. "Man, this place is..."
He got a good look at Angel, and
his expression changed from awe to something closer to
the neighborhood of stark
terror. "You're... covered in blood. Hey! I thought
making with the horizontal
wasn't a danger thing anymore!"
Angel spun away from him and headed back to his brooding,
ignoring the boy's
implication. "Spike had a little accident," he
explained, and collapsed back
onto the couch, "With my fists."
"Ooh! And I missed it?" Xander
lamented, "I've got to work on my city driving.
What happened?"
Angel watched as Buffy's friend tossed his jacket on the
nearest chair, helped
himself to a soda from the bar's mini-fridge, and plopped
down in the recliner.
"Make yourself at home," he offered dryly.
"Thanks. So, did you kill him? Because that would
save everybody a *lot* of
trouble."
"I tried," the vampire informed him.
"Let me guess. Buffy wasn't cool with the
idea?"
Angel shook his head.
"Yeah, that's sort of what I figured. She's always
been big on the
Spike-defense."
Angel sat up and nailed him with an accusing look.
"Did you know what he did to
her?"
Xander instinctively backed
away from the demon's anger, immediately
understanding his reference. "Uh...yeah. I sort of
found her afterward."
The elder man grimaced. "Then why in the Hell is he
still solid? You let him get
away with trying to... to... rape her?" He forced
the word out.
"Hey, pal! It wasn't my *choice*! There was other
stuff going on at the time,
and he split town right after! The next time he showed
up, he was You Redux, and
dusting was off the menu!"
"Because of Buffy," Angel completed his
unspoken thought wearily. "That's the
worst part about all of this. She thinks so little of
herself that she let him
get away with..." He scrubbed his hands over his
face. "The whole thing makes me
sick."
"Welcome to my world," Xander
replied, popping open his soda and taking a long
slug. It was nice not to be the focus of Angel's enmity
for a change. "I was
head guy in the `Stake the Bastard' Brigade, but I got
outvoted. I can't believe
she didn't tell you any of this."
"We don't talk about Spike," he confessed,
"It's an unwritten rule I'm starting
to regret."
"Well, fear not, my undead friend. The cavalry will
be here tout de suite. We'll
figure out what's going on, and then we can kick the
bleached-blond-pain-in-our-asses to the nearest
handy-dandy curb."
Angel's gaze hung on the dark hallway leading to the
bedroom. "I have a feeling
it's not going to be that simple."
~
If Spike had looked bad when he first came back, he
looked ten times worse now.
His face - and most of the rest of him - was a swollen
mass of bruises and ccuts
that rivaled the results of his run-in with Glory four
years ago.
Buffy sat on the edge of the bed as Hello Nurse left.
"I'm sorry," she apologized softly, "He
had no right."
Spike peered at her through the one eye that wasn't
puffed completely shut. "He
had every right. I would have done the same. Or worse.
Problem, is, he wasted
time with punching when he should have been snapping or
ripping. I tried to tell
him, but..."
"I can take care of myself," she reminded him.
"And whether or not there's any
grudge-holding should be up to me, no one else. Even
Angel. No... especially
Angel. He hasn't been part of my life in so long, I don't
know where he gets
off...""
Spike sat up, interrupting her rant before it really
began. "He gets off because
he loves you, and it rips him up inside to think of you
getting hurt. Seems
pretty clear to me. Not everyone forgives as easily as
you do, you know."
"Spike..." she said, catching something in his
inflection, "You don't blame
yourself for that, do you?"
"Well, yeah," he snorted. "I know, you're
going to give me the old `soul/no
soul' lecture. But save it. It doesn't matter what I was
then versus what I am
now. It's all the same in my head. I just feel worse
about it with a soul,
that's all." Softening, he reached out and took her
hand. "I never did tell you
I was sorry. I know it's lame, but I should have said it
anyway."
"Don't. It doesn't matter, now." She'd been
through this before, with Angel.
When he came back from Hell broken with guilt over the
things he'd done when he
was soulless. She never blamed either of them for the
crimes perpetrated by
their bodies when the demon was in full control.
"It's of the past."
"Tell that to your pet Hellhound out there."
A ruckus echoed from the living room, heralded by
familiar voices.
"Sounds like the gang's all here," Spike
declared with a note of sarcasm,
letting her go and easing himself stiffly from the bed.
"Must be time for the
Scooby Meeting. Can't wait to catch up with old
mates."
She watched him painstakingly make his way out of the
room, and worried that for
some strange reason, seeing him in that condition because
of what he tried to do
to her gave her a twisted sense of closure.
Buffy never blamed ensouled
Spike - consciously, at least - for attacking her,
but Angel's action in her defense, however heinous,
healed something far less
rational inside of her. Something whose voice she'd never
let speak before, in
all the years since it happened.
And Buffy had to wonder: if that was true, what else
hadn't she been hearing
while she was sealed up in her denial bubble?
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Seven
"I dunno," Spike said
to Buffy, "I feel like crap now, sure. But at least I can
actually *taste* the brews and onion rings. And I figure,
once I'm stronger, I
can start training. No reason why 120 years of experience
ought to go down the
drain just because I don't have superpowers
anymore."
"I don't see why not," she agreed without
enthusiasm. "You know all the
technical aspects of fighting. You just need to learn to
use them with normal
strength. Giles and Xander will
help. We all will."
It was impossible for Spike - Now "William Haverton", according to his shiny new
identity - to miss how present Buffy wasn't. The entire
afternoon had gone like
this... small talk punctuated by some awkward quiet,
followed by a bit of
staring into space, and then some unhappy silence for
spice.
"Don't worry, Pet," he assured her.
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy's got the attention span of a
gnat on crystal meth. He'll get
over it."
Her gaze remained locked on the vista of the sparkling LA
skyline, but seemed
farther away than that as she replied, "I don't
know. We never really talked
about..." she faced him once more. "You and
me."
Spike snorted. "Yeah? Well, that makes three of us,
then doesn't it? Not that
it's any of his damn business anyway."
"It *is* his business, Spike. All of this is. He is
right that we don't know why
you're back, or who brought you." She added, more to
herself than anything, "Or
why now?"
The ex-vampire glowered at her. "What, you're the
only one who gets to return
from the dead more than once without a note from the
Almighty?"
She gave him a look. "Don't be stupid. But... there
were consequences to both
times I came back. As... you probably remember."
He tensed, recalling that year he and Buffy spent as...
what? Lovers? Not
hardly. Fuck buddies? Didn't quite fit, so far as the
`buddies' part went. Well,
whatever it was, for all the rocking sex and entertaining
head games, it had
still been the pinnacle of suck, overall.
Look where it had ultimately got him. Soddin'
human.
"Whatever. The fact is, consequences or not, I'm
here, and all of us are just
gonna have to deal with it."
"It's how we deal with it that I'm worried
about," she replied with a sigh.
Spike was hesitant to come any closer to her - he'd been
holding his own
emotions over all of this at bay with what felt like a
wall of Saran Wrap. But
her obvious pain drew him as it always had, and he
figured he owed her some
small measure of comfort for sticking by him at the cost
of her relationship
with Meathead. He rose and came to sit beside her on the
loveseat, glad for the
first time that he could hardly smell anymore. Buffy's
scent had driven him
crazy since the first time he caught it, hunting her in
the Bronze a million
years ago, and that was one more thing he just wouldn't be
able to deal with
right now.
"I'll tell you what," he began, keeping his
tone light. "When I'm a little less
wobbly `round the edges, what's say I bugger out of the
City of
all your problems would be solved."
Her head snapped up to stare at him. "And go where?
Do what? You have no clue
how to make it in the world as a human. Besides... if
Angel and the Senior
Partners want to find you, there's nowhere you can run.
Their reach is pretty
long. Like, interdimensional."
He shrugged. "I went up in flames last time, luv. There's not much I'm afraid of
at this point."
"No. You need to stay here. At least until we find
out what they have planned
for you. I couldn't handle..." she glanced away,
trailing off.
The softness, the disquiet in her voice crumbled his
hard-built bravado. "You
sure that's the only reason you want me to stay?"
It took her a moment to meet his gaze. "I owe
you," she told him simply. "A
lot."
He backed away. "Owe me? You... Have you gone
completely box of rocks?"
"You were there for me when no one else was. You got
a soul for me," she
reminded him softly. "You died for me. So yes, I owe
you."
Spike shoved himself off the couch and stomped across the
living room, staring
out the window for a few moments while he digested what
she was saying... and
found himself horrified. Ironic, considering that once,
he would have cut off
his... arm to hear her say those words.
He finally found the will to confront her. "I didn't
die for you. I died because
it was the right thing to do. And the rest? You don't owe
me, because you never
asked for any of it. In case *you've* forgotten, I spent
the best part of five
years trying to kill you and your mates. The only reason
that changed is because
I didn't have a *choice*! And at the *very* least, I'd
damn well bet that trying
to RAPE YOU pretty much erases any remaining debt,
wouldn't you?"
"What did you just say?" came a dangerous hiss
from the foyer.
Buffy whipped around to find Angel standing in the
shadows of the entry hall,
his face contorted with rage.
"A-Angel..." she stammered, and got up.
Spike stood tall and silent as his grandsire stalked
toward him with death in
his dark eyes. Not his fault the two of them lived in a
damn soap opera... just
his tough luck.
"I ASKED YOU WHAT THE HELL YOU JUST SAID!!!"
the vampire roared.
"You heard what I said. Buffy didn't love me, so I
got it into my head to force
her to," he confessed, fully prepared to die for
that alone.
Angel turned in nightmarish slow motion to face a stunned
Buffy. "Is this true?"
She stared at him, aghast. "It's... it's not what
you..."
"IS. IT. *TRUE*?!"
"I just said it was," Spike cut in, taking the
steps back down into the living
room.
"He didn't, though," Buffy insisted, "I
stopped him."
"You..." Angel sputtered, "YOU STOPPED
HIM??? He ATTACKED you, and because you
happened to be stronger than he is, that makes it all
right?"
"No, but..."
"Hey! Your problem's with me, Angelus, not
her!"
Angel spun at the sound of his voice, and before anyone
could react, he'd
grabbed Spike by the throat and thrown him clear across
the room. He crashed
into the far wall, but never made it to the floor, as
Angel was instantly upon
him once more, in vamp face, pounding the peroxide blond
into a bloody pulp.
Buffy sprinted to them and grabbed Angel by the back of
the coat, but in the
clutches of a berserker demon rage, she couldn't pull him
off.
"STOP IT! YOU'RE KILLING HIM!" she screamed.
Angel shoved her away without pause and slammed Spike's
head three times into
the wall, leaving a dent in the wallpapered sheetrock.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" He
rammed him into the hole once more. "I'LL RIP YOU TO
FUCKING SHREDS!!!"
"Yeah! Do it!" Spike shrieked through the blood
in his mouth, hoping death would
come a little more quickly, this time... and with less
fire. Also that he
wouldn't end up suffering the way he'd seen Angelus make
so many of his victims
suffer - like maybe getting skinned alive or having his wank chopped off and fed
to him. "Go ahead! Snap my neck! Rip my head
off!"
Another heave, and he was flying through the glass door
in the entertainment
center on the other side of the room. But before Angel
could resume his attempt
to beat the bastard to death, Buffy tackled him from
behind, sending him
slamming face down into the floor. Seeing nothing but his
desperate need to
kill, Angel automatically flipped over and drew back for
a punch.
She dropped down onto his chest and pinned both his arms
with her knees.
"STOP THIS! STOP! ANGEL! STOP!" she shouted at
him, then her voice broke.
"Please don't do this. Please..."
Angel morphed back to his human visage as her tears
brought him slowly back to
reality. He blinked at her, still half-blinded by the violence
exploding in his
blood. Afraid he might lose it and try to hit her, he
pushed her off, and got to
his feet, but didn't move either toward her or the still
form crumpled on the
floor nearby. Buffy hurried over to check Spike's pulse.
"He's not dead. His heart's still beating,"
Angel snarled. "Which it shouldn't
be."
Buffy nailed him with a withering glare. "Just call
the nurse."
He crossed his arms over his chest, but didn't move.
"Fine. I'll do it then," she snapped, and
grabbed the phone.
~
While Buffy and the nurse tended to Spike in the bedroom
(God, he could hardly
think those three words together...) Angel called into
the office.
"Mr. Angel's office. Michael speaking."
"Michael. I need you to go down to the archives and
get everything we have on
Spike," he commanded. "And I mean
everything."
"But Sir, I can just call down..." his
assistant began to remind him.
"No. Go down yourself. I don't want anything to
`accidentally' be omitted. I
want the entire file. Bring it to the apartment yourself.
Don't use a courier."
"Of course, Sir. Right away."
He hung up and sank onto the couch just as the doorbell
rang. For a moment, he
was confused - even Michael wasn't that fast. He got up
and took a glance at the
security console in the foyer.
"Oh, great. Just what I needed," he grumbled,
but opened the door.
Xander stepped inside, agape in
the same fashion that he had been since he set
foot in the building. "Man, this place is..."
He got a good look at Angel, and
his expression changed from awe to something closer to
the neighborhood of stark
terror. "You're... covered in blood. Hey! I thought
making with the horizontal
wasn't a danger thing anymore!"
Angel spun away from him and headed back to his brooding,
ignoring the boy's
implication. "Spike had a little accident," he
explained, and collapsed back
onto the couch, "With my fists."
"Ooh! And I missed it?" Xander
lamented, "I've got to work on my city driving.
What happened?"
Angel watched as Buffy's friend tossed his jacket on the
nearest chair, helped
himself to a soda from the bar's mini-fridge, and plopped
down in the recliner.
"Make yourself at home," he offered dryly.
"Thanks. So, did you kill him? Because that would
save everybody a *lot* of
trouble."
"I tried," the vampire informed him.
"Let me guess. Buffy wasn't cool with the
idea?"
Angel shook his head.
"Yeah, that's sort of what I figured. She's always
been big on the
Spike-defense."
Angel sat up and nailed him with an accusing look.
"Did you know what he did to
her?"
Xander instinctively backed
away from the demon's anger, immediately
understanding his reference. "Uh...yeah. I sort of
found her afterward."
The elder man grimaced. "Then why in the Hell is he
still solid? You let him get
away with trying to... to... rape her?" He forced
the word out.
"Hey, pal! It wasn't my *choice*! There was other
stuff going on at the time,
and he split town right after! The next time he showed
up, he was You Redux, and
dusting was off the menu!"
"Because of Buffy," Angel completed his
unspoken thought wearily. "That's the
worst part about all of this. She thinks so little of
herself that she let him
get away with..." He scrubbed his hands over his
face. "The whole thing makes me
sick."
"Welcome to my world," Xander
replied, popping open his soda and taking a long
slug. It was nice not to be the focus of Angel's enmity
for a change. "I was
head guy in the `Stake the Bastard' Brigade, but I got
outvoted. I can't believe
she didn't tell you any of this."
"We don't talk about Spike," he confessed,
"It's an unwritten rule I'm starting
to regret."
"Well, fear not, my undead friend. The cavalry will
be here tout de suite. We'll
figure out what's going on, and then we can kick the
bleached-blond-pain-in-our-asses to the nearest
handy-dandy curb."
Angel's gaze hung on the dark hallway leading to the
bedroom. "I have a feeling
it's not going to be that simple."
~
If Spike had looked bad when he first came back, he
looked ten times worse now.
His face - and most of the rest of him - was a swollen
mass of bruises and ccuts
that rivaled the results of his run-in with Glory four
years ago.
Buffy sat on the edge of the bed as Hello Nurse left.
"I'm sorry," she apologized softly, "He
had no right."
Spike peered at her through the one eye that wasn't
puffed completely shut. "He
had every right. I would have done the same. Or worse.
Problem, is, he wasted
time with punching when he should have been snapping or
ripping. I tried to tell
him, but..."
"I can take care of myself," she reminded him.
"And whether or not there's any
grudge-holding should be up to me, no one else. Even
Angel. No... especially
Angel. He hasn't been part of my life in so long, I don't
know where he gets
off...""
Spike sat up, interrupting her rant before it really
began. "He gets off because
he loves you, and it rips him up inside to think of you
getting hurt. Seems
pretty clear to me. Not everyone forgives as easily as
you do, you know."
"Spike..." she said, catching something in his
inflection, "You don't blame
yourself for that, do you?"
"Well, yeah," he snorted. "I know, you're
going to give me the old `soul/no
soul' lecture. But save it. It doesn't matter what I was
then versus what I am
now. It's all the same in my head. I just feel worse
about it with a soul,
that's all." Softening, he reached out and took her
hand. "I never did tell you
I was sorry. I know it's lame, but I should have said it
anyway."
"Don't. It doesn't matter, now." She'd been
through this before, with Angel.
When he came back from Hell broken with guilt over the
things he'd done when he
was soulless. She never blamed either of them for the
crimes perpetrated by
their bodies when the demon was in full control.
"It's of the past."
"Tell that to your pet Hellhound out there."
A ruckus echoed from the living room, heralded by
familiar voices.
"Sounds like the gang's all here," Spike
declared with a note of sarcasm,
letting her go and easing himself stiffly from the bed.
"Must be time for the
Scooby Meeting. Can't wait to catch up with old
mates."
She watched him painstakingly make his way out of the
room, and worried that for
some strange reason, seeing him in that condition because
of what he tried to do
to her gave her a twisted sense of closure.
Buffy never blamed ensouled
Spike - consciously, at least - for attacking her,
but Angel's action in her defense, however heinous,
healed something far less
rational inside of her. Something whose voice she'd never
let speak before, in
all the years since it happened.
And Buffy had to wonder: if that was true, what else
hadn't she been hearing
while she was sealed up in her denial bubble?
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Eight
Wesley and Fred arrived a few minutes later, and while
they,
Giles and Xander set up for the
ritual with Spike looking on, Buffy went out on
the veranda to talk to Angel.
She found him sitting on the far ledge outside the
enclosure with his legs
hanging over the side, dangling twelve stories above the
busy street below. She
leaned against the wall beside them.
"Do I need to remind you that you won't die if you
jump?" she asked softly,
trying to start off on a lighter note than they'd been
using with each other
lately.
He frowned at the skyline of the city a short distance
away. "I can't talk to
you right now."
His words hurt, of course, but she wasn't surprised to
hear them… exactly. She
had been so upset with Spike's return, and what it all
meant, that she hadn't
really given the kind of thought she probably should have
to how deeply it was
affecting Angel. She resisted the urge to reach up and
stroke his back or his
hair. The need to touch him was almost painful, but if he
didn't want to talk,
it wasn't very likely he wanted physical comfort, either.
"Okay, then I'll talk. I just wanted you to know
that... I understand," she told
him. "I don't approve, but I understand."
"I don't think you do," he replied flatly.
"You couldn't possibly."
"No? Hm. Well... I'd say
what happened with Faith a few years ago was a
reasonable facsimile."
Angel shot her a look over his shoulder. "Faith was
never my lover."
"How was I supposed to know that?" she
whispered, the pain of that time just as
sharp now as then. When Angel had scooped her heart out
with a soupspoon by
choosing Faith's rehabilitation over Buffy's pain. Of
course, that wasn't really
what he had been doing… it just felt that way to her.
Much as he was feeling
about Spike, she figured.
He shook his head in disgust. Were they really having
this conversation *again*?
Now? "Because I told you in no uncertain terms. And
Faith never tried to rape me
while professing to be in love with me, either. Now,
please. Just leave me alone
for a while."
Buffy sighed and leaned over the ledge. "You've been
alone for almost four days.
Don't you think it's time we talk about this?"
"'This' happened just a few hours ago, for me,"
he ground out, "You'll have to
excuse me if it's just a little much, on top of
everything else, to know that
you feel the way you do about Spike after he tried to
*force himself on you*."
"Faith tried to murder you..." she reminded
him.
"And Spike's done that a hundred times over as well.
If it wasn't for that chip
in his head, he would have killed you a long time ago. Or
worse. If you had any
clue of the things he wanted to do to you..."
"I know that. Don't you think I know that? But he
has a soul now. And if you'll
remember, you weren't exactly the poster boy for kindness
when you didn't have a
soul, either."
"Angelus wasn't your lover! *I* was!" he
snapped. "Maybe that line is thin, but
it's there."
"It's there for Spike too, Angel."
He hauled himself off the wall and stalked away from her
toward the pool. "I
don't care. What he did..."
"Tried to do," she corrected him, but stayed
where she was.
"Fine. What he *tried* to do to you is unforgivable.
And I really can't believe
you still defend him with such vehemence... you'd throw
me over for him... after
he violated your trust that way. You shared something
sacred with him, Buffy,
and he spit on it. That makes him the lowest form of
garbage." He looked up at
her finally, and the expression of loathing and distaste
on his face made her
cringe. "No. This... *atrocity* doesn't come
anywhere *near* what we went
through with Faith. And I've lost a great deal of respect
for *you* that you
would make excuses for him simply because he went out and
got a soul to
manipulate your emotions with. Are you really that that
much of a fool? Are you
that desperate to have a man - any man - in your bed? It
makes me ill. I feel
like I don't know you at all."
His cold words sliced straight through her heart, and her
eyes filled with
tears. "You... you don't mean that. You told me that
the things I've done didn't
matter."
He took a step closer, replying cruelly, "Well, I
didn't have all the facts, did
I? You seem to have left out some of the more pertinent
parts. No wonder you
never wanted to talk about him. You're ashamed. And
rightfully so. Just... get
away from me. I can't stand the sight of you right
now."
She stood there trembling for a long moment, then turned
and ran into the
apartment, sobbing.
Angel clenched his fists and roared at the night sky,
cursing the cosmos, the
Senior Partners, the Powers - anyone and everyone who
might have been involved
in bringing Spike back to demolish their lives.
~
"We can do the truth spell first," Willow
suggested to Spike once she'd finished
her preparations. "It's pretty quick, and it won't
take too much out of either
of us. We'll need as much energy as we can conserve for
the Litmus spell."
"Fine," the blond said, still holding a steak -
of the T-bone variety - over his
swollen left eye. "Let's just get it over with, eh?
I've got groaning in pain
and clutching my shattered ribcage to do."
Maybe we should wait and do this when you're feeling
better."
He shook his head. "The sooner everyone gets it
through their thick skulls I
didn't have anything to do with getting reconstituted
like soup mix, the
better."
"Uh... I don't mean to be a Willow-magick-pooper, but... this spell *is* only
going to work on Spike, right?" Xander
asked, casting a worried glance around
the group from his place at the edge of the circle.
"Cause there's a whole lot
of truth that probably shouldn't get shared
tonight."
"Yeah," Faith agreed, "And I'm remembering
the last time you cast a `simple'
spell, I ended up part of the Stone Menagerie. And I
gotta tell ya, falling when
the wires broke sucked."
"No, it should be fine,"
- only the truth we seek should come out."
"You keep saying `should', that's what worries
me." Xander pointed out.
His best friend gave him a glare. "I can turn
hundreds of girls into Vampire
Slayers. I think I can handle a little truth spell."
She glanced around. "Where
are Buffy and Angel?"
"Sulking," Xander
replied. "Buffy's in the bedroom. Deadboy's out
on the porch
howling at the moon."
"We need them here," Fred put in. "I've
got the energy balanced evenly in the
room - I think - but we're going to need all the power we
can get."
"I'll fetch Angel," Wesley offered, and moved
out to the veranda.
"I'd better check on B," Faith remarked, and
headed down the hall toward the
bedroom.
"Well, this oughtta be
fun," Spike grumbled.
~
Angel was back to glowering at the city when Wesley
approached him.
"Angel... we're ready to start the ritual."
The vampire nodded, but said nothing. His colleague came
to stand beside him,
noting the expression of abject misery on his pale
features.
"Do you care to tell me what happened?" he
asked, refusing to allow Angel to
sink any further into his customary solitary funk.
Whatever was happening
between he and Buffy needed to be solved - and quickly.
The signs reported in
the Eternal Flame Prophecy indicated that time was short
before the next
catastrophic event they would have to face together.
And then there was the more personal matter of his
closest friend's happiness...
Angel shook his head in response to the question,
remaining silent.
"I realize that things are... uncomfortable right
now. But we do need you to
focus on the matter at hand," the Englishman
reminded him gently.
"If I focus any more, I'll turn to dust," the
vampire muttered.
"Did you and Buffy have a falling out?"
His companion snorted bitterly. "You could say
that."
Wesley sighed - it was just as he feared. "What
happened?"
Angel cast a weary glance over his shoulder toward the
bustling living room
behind him. "Spike happened."
"Yes. Well, that's all the more reason to perform this
ritual, isn't it?" Wesley
queried. "We can discover, at least, what sort of
power resurrected him, and his
involvement in the matter. That should ease at least some
of the tension, no?"
"No," the other man replied flatly, "I
don't think that will help at all. These
problems started a lot more than five days ago, and a
couple of spells won't
even begin to repair the damage."
Wesley joined him in his vigil over the city, at a loss
as to what to say next.
What comfort could he offer in such a complicated
situation?
"I said some things..." Angel confessed softly.
"I hurt her."
"Emotions are running high, Angel. As Spike's
condition illustrates. I don't
mean to judge, and I understand that you're upset. But
was it really necessary
to beat him half to death?"
The vampire's expression darkened. "It really
was."
His comrade nodded, knowing from Angel's demeanor that
any argument to the
contrary would be useless right now.
"I think the prophecies are about Spike," Angel
added weakly.
The younger man stared at him - he had been pondering
that exact possibility
since the former vampire's return. At least some of the
technical details fit -
to his dismay. But...
"Which prophecies?" he inquired, not wanting to
put forth his suspicions with
the current situation as volatile as it was.
"All of them," Angel replied "Aberjian. The Eternal Flame Scroll - I think we've
been operating under the faulty assumption that I was the
vampire with a soul in
those auguries. But Spike fits the bill... maybe better
than I do."
Wesley had been considering the remote chance that Shanshu may have been
bestowed on Spike - but he had never for a moment
considered him one of the
Great Warriors of the newer prophecy. "That's
nonsense. Angel, Spike hardly
fulfills all the requirements set forth for Shanshu. And almost none of those in
the Eternal Flame Prophecy. It's simply a
coincidence."
Angel looked his friend in the eye. "He wore the
amulet meant for me. He helped
Buffy save the world from the First. Now he's human. If
I've learned anything in
250 years, it's that you can never take portents and
omens at face value."
"Perhaps. But the prophecy about you and
Buffy..."
"Could also just as easily be about Buffy and Spike.
You see how she is with him
- it's obvious - for some unfathomable reason -- she's in
love with him."
Wesley startled at that declaration. "Obvious to
whom? Certainly not me."
"Then you're blind," Angel snapped. "Look,
it doesn't matter. We don't have time
for this right now. I want to hear the truth from Spike's
mouth."
The ex-Watcher stared after his friend for a moment,
taken aback by the easy
capitulation to the worst possibility Angel automatically
assumed, before
following him inside once more.
~
Buffy had finally managed to stop crying, and sat on the
edge of the bed in the
guestroom, staring blankly into space, when Faith came to
fetch her.
The secondary Slayer took note of her friend's anguish,
and debated whether to
push it aside and demand she shake it off, or to try and
soothe some of her
pain.
The blonde solved the problem for her. "Angel hates
me," she murmured, as though
in shock. "He found out everything about Spike, and
now he can't even stand to
look at me anymore."
Faith felt her pain as acutely as if it were her own. But
she also knew what
Buffy was saying wasn't true. She had been inside of
Angel... she'd seen and
felt the depth of his feelings for B. There were bruises
there, sure. Little
resentments, jealousies, and unhealed wounds. But those
only added layers to his
love. Made it stronger. Richer. More human and real.
"No, he doesn't," she stated unequivocally.
"No way in Hell."
"You didn't see him. You didn't hear the way he
talked to me." She sniffled as
her eyes began to tear up again. "I've never seen
him like that. Even when we've
fought... even when things were at their worst between
us, he never..."
"B..." Faith interrupted gently, sitting beside
her and sliding a comforting arm
over her shoulders. "He's shook, sure. He's not
thinking straight. You gotta
give him a chance to think all this through. He'll get
past it."
Buffy shook her head. "It won't matter. If he feels
the way he said he does...
that's something that can't ever be fixed. And now Spike
is here... he'll never
be able to let it go." She took a sharp breath and
let it out with a choked sob,
"I think it's over, Faith. We just barely started,
and now I've lost him
forever!"
The younger Slayer felt her own tough heart break for her
two closest friends as
Buffy collapsed in her arms, sobbing senselessly in her
grief. Faith knew all
too well what it felt like to have all your dreams ripped
away, leaving you with
nothing.
She only wished she'd been able to cry about it the way
Buffy currently was.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Nine
Faith returned alone to the living room a few minutes
later, looking distinctly
like she'd just survived a war.
Angel could hear Buffy crying, even through the so-called
soundproofed walls,
but hardened his heart against her wailing. She'd made
her choices. If she was
suffering for them, that was her problem. They had work
to do now.
He kept telling himself that, and still... his heart
crumbled at the sound of
her broken sobs, and every ounce of his energy went to
resisting the urge to go
to her. To tell her he was sorry... that he didn't mean
any of it. That he loved
her, forever ...no matter what.
Only... right now, he wasn't sure that any of those
things were true.
"Where's Buffy?"
The brunette gave Angel a pained look. "She's not
feeling good. She says we
should go on without her."
"Like Hell!" Spike shouted, getting up from his
seat on the couch. "I'm not
doing this without at least one person on my side!"
Everyone glanced uncomfortably at Angel, who kept his
gaze nailed to the floor.
"We're all on your side,"
okay."
"Speak for yourself," Xander
muttered, and suddenly imagined Anya beside him,
saying that she was more concerned that *she* be okay. He
had one of his
occasional sharp pangs of grief. He still missed her.
"Buffy's not coming, and that's the end of it,"
Faith barked. "So if you want to
get this party started, let's stop screwing around and do
it."
Spike turned to look down the hallway, poised as if to go
down there himself.
But then at the sharp looks of the others, he thought
better of it, and arranged
himself in the center of the circle instead.
Fred got up from her barstool and took
combined ritual I scripted. I don't think we should drag
this out any longer
than we have to. It'd be simple to combine the texts, and
I'm sure the divining
crystal will help magnify the truth spell enough so the
Litmus won't be
overwhelmed."
The elder woman blushed and cast her eyes down.
"Well... I mean... it only makes
sense. The sooner we get all this worked out, the easier
it'll be for everyone."
The witch nodded and turned back to the others.
"Okay, change in plan."
~
The gathered warriors sat in a circle holding hands, with
the object of their
ritual flat on his back at the center, surrounded by lit
candles, crystals, and
bunches of sage and rosemary.
Spike felt like the main course at some twisted
cannibalistic dinner party.
But... at least he didn't have to worry about catching
his sleeve on fire and
going up in a cloud of dust. All flames could do to him
now was burn him beyond
recognition and leave him scarred and in horrible agony
for the rest of his
life. Which, really, wasn't all that different from how
he was feeling anyway.
"Arachne, Goddess of the
web that binds us all, we call you. Show us the path
your supplicant has walked. Guide us to his source.
Sophia, Mother of Wisdom, we
call you. Grant us the sight to see what cannot be seen.
To understand the
unknowable. Ma'at, Goddess of
the Cosmic Scales, grant your humble servants a
sign of what forces led to his coming. We beseech you,
show us. Bind his tongue
to tell only truth. All of the truth. Bring us the
answers we seek, from your
minds, from his mouth. As we will, so it must be."
A hush fell over the room, the air unnaturally silent but
for the breathing of
the present humans and the crackle and snap of candles.
And nothing else.
Spike cracked one eye open to focus on the witch beside
him. No glowy business
apparent. No funny magickal
wind or tinkly fairy tunes. And he didn't feel any
different at all.
Hm.
"I'm president of the
all your azaleas."
A collective groan rose from the others.
"That should have worked!"
Spike blew out the closest candles and sat up.
"Well, I can still lie just
fine."
Fred frowned. "This doesn't make any sense. The
readings were almost normal..."
Angel got up and walked away from the circle without
comment, moving to the bar
and pouring himself a drink, downing it, and immediately
pouring another.
"Actually, it may," Giles offered. "It's
possible that the chaotic energy
patters we've seen over the past few months continue, and
your instruments
simply didn't measure them properly."
"Probably a good thing it didn't work, then," Xander commented, "Since NOBODY
TOLD US THIS AHEAD OF TIME!"
"But the magicks have been
more stable since Buffy and Angel..." Fred cut
herself off. "I mean, since the vortex. The readings
are still a little weird
now and then, but nothing worse than you see before a big
thunderstorm or an
earthquake."
"Well, this was a waste of time. Looks like you get
to keep your deep, dark
secrets for now, Blondie of the Living Dead." Faith
complained as she got up.
"I'm outta here. Call me
when you fix your mojo, Red."
"It's not my fault!" the Witch cried.
"Everything went exactly the way it was
supposed to!"
"Apparently not," Wesley corrected her.
"Perhaps we should try the ritual in one
of Fred's warded labs - the energies are artificially
stabilized there."
The manager of Wolfram & Hart's R&D Division rose
and laid a comforting hand on
be dampened by the wards in my labs. And...I've been
wanting you to come see it
anyway. Magicks in a controlled
environment are really neat."
Giles nodded as he too rose. "Yes. That will give
everyone an opportunity to get
some rest. It's possible that... the chaotic emotional
energies are interfering
with the spell's intent, as well."
Angel caught the pointed glances in his direction, but
ignored them.
"Good. We'll reconvene at Wolfram & Hart
tomorrow night, then, shall we?" Wesley
agreed.
As everyone went to leave, a bleary-eyed Buffy appeared,
leaning heavily in the
doorway, looking far worse for wear.
"Is it over?" she asked, her voice shaky,
"Did you find out anything?"
Willow immediately went to her side. "Yes. And no.
The spell didn't work. We're
going to try again in one of Fred's labs tomorrow. Do you
want to come home with
us?"
Buffy looked across the room, where Spike had settled on
the couch and turned on
the big-screen TV, and Angel stood staring out the
veranda windows, drinking and
scowling at the night.
"I probably shouldn't," she told her friend,
"I don't want to leave them here
alone."
"It's fine, Pet," Spike called out, and held up
the enormous boning knife he'd
filched from the kitchen. "I'm covered."
Angel said nothing. He didn't even bother to turn around,
breaking Buffy's heart
all over again.
"Well... okay. If you're sure," Buffy voiced
reluctantly, "Then... I'll see you
guys tomorrow?"
Spike gave her a warm smile. "Thanks, luv."
She waited for another moment, but Angel still didn't
acknowledge her presence
or her impending departure. She nodded and followed the
others out the front
door, leaving the two men pointedly ignoring one another
on opposite sides of
the room.
When Spike heard the door shut, he clicked off the TV and
turned to glare at
Angel's back.
"We better talk, mate."
"I'm not your *mate*," Angel spat, "And we
have nothing to say to one another."
"Oh yeah? Well, seems to me you've got a few things
on your mind - or so my
broken ribs suggest. And by the way, this is a Ginsu I've got here, so it should
cut pretty quickly and clean through your thick neck, in
case you got any notion
to finish what you started earlier." He sat up
further on the couch and reached
for his beer. "You're a big, stupid bastard, you
know that? Not that it should
be news..."
Angel slowly turned to serve the blond a frigid glare,
but Spike didn't back
down. He owed Buffy this, even if it meant his gory death
and/or dismemberment
at the end.
"You got a lot of soddin'
nerve, treating her the way you have been," he went
on, "Punishing her for having a big heart. A lot of
fucking nerve. `Specially
when you're supposed to be the Big Love or whatthefuckever."
"I'm not explaining myself to you," the vampire
hissed, "Or anyone."
"Good. That's the attitude. You're doing a Class A
job at that cold-hearted
jackass routine you got going. My old grandsire'd
be proud. Who knew you could
be such a thoughtless dickhead *with* a soul? Besides me,
of course."
Angel held his growing temper in check - barely.
"Shut your mouth. You're in no
position to take any sort of moral high ground."
"Right this second? I figure I'm in Hell of a lot
better position than you are.
Buffy's doing her job - both your jobs - and you're
treating her like something
you scraped off the bottom of your shoe."
Angel came closer, pointing furiously at Buffy's
ex-lover. "I said shut your
mouth! You don't know the first thing about Buffy and
I."
"No? Huh. Seems to me I know a Hell of a lot more
than you think. She talks in
her sleep, you know. And I don't think I can count the
times she called me
`Angel' when we were-"
The vampire charged him with a roar, and Spike barely had
time to dive over the
back of the couch and make a run for the kitchen.
"Come and get me, Angelus! Take your psychotic
bastard bullshit out on me, not
her!" he taunted.
A crackle of electricity exploded in the room, and the
lights flickered, then
went out, plunging the apartment into darkness.
"Oh, bugger me," Spike complained, instantly
blinded. How the fuck was he going
to run when he couldn't even see?
"I can see just fine," Angel growled... a split
second before his enormous hand
shot out and seized Spike by the throat. "Now I'm
going to kill you, the way
Buffy should have years ago, but never did because she
was too soft-hearted and
lost in your head games to do what had to be done. Then
we'll all sleep a lot
better."
"I told you before," the blond choked, "I
got no problem with that. I deserve
worse. You don't know the half of what I did to
her."
"I know plenty. More than enough," Angel spat,
prying the knife easily from his
soon-to-be victim's loosening grip, and holding the point
to Spike's jaw with
enough force to draw blood. "I'm going to slice you
open from gizzard to groin
and pull out your organs one by one, slowly, so you can
watch."
Spike gulped in involuntary fear, knowing full well the
fucker could do exactly
that. But before he could respond, a fierce tremor shook
the building, knocking
them both off their feet. Angel let go just enough so
that Spike was able to
knee him in the crotch and crawl away. There was barely a
moment's pause before
another, harder quake hit.
"Aw, for Chrissake!"
Spike bellowed above the bedlam, "I don't wanna
die in some
stupid earthquake! I want Angelus to fillet me!"
He slapped a hand over his mouth in horror. What the fuck
was that about? Then
it hit him - Red's spell. On a really bloody long delay.
"Wonderful. Just
soddin' great. Perfect time for
therapy," he mumbled to himself.
"Happy to oblige that request, William..."
Angel called out of the darkness.
"I'm going to make you pay for every moment Buffy
hurt because of you. For every
second of our lives together you've stolen from us. And
for stealing MY
DESTINY!"
Spike's head snapped up. "Your what? Are you off
your nut? Never mind." He kept
moving, feeling along the wall beside him, trying to find
the front door as the
trembling went on. "I didn't steal anything from
you, ya stupid ponce! I
don't
know what you're actin' like
such a bloody martyr for anyway! You're the one she
loves! You always bloody well have been! I just happened
to be handy. One vamp's
as good as the next in the sack, I suppose. Although
skills- wise..."
"You took advantage of her when she was
vulnerable," Angel snarled, stalking
Spike in the stygian black as if the world wasn't collapsing
around them.
Angelus always did like natural disasters. "Somehow
you twisted her around until
she believed she loved you. It's my fault for leaving her
the way I did... but
I'm going to make you hurt for that, too."
Ah, honesty. Spike's favorite soddin'
state of being. Oh well, might as well
make it work for him. "She never LOVED ME, YOU
NUTTER ASSHOLE!" he shouted, "I
was just a place-fucking-holder for YOU! Can't you get
that through your thick
goddamn boulder of a head? She cares about me, sure, but
she cares about the
fate of the bloody Whooping Crane, too. So what?"
The earthquake increased in intensity, and suddenly the
room tilted, spilling
Spike in a heap against the wall.
"I KNOW SHE LOVES YOU!" Angel raged above the
din, "I CAN *SMELL* IT ON HER! AND
THAT, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, IS WHY I'M GOING TO WATCH
YOU *DIE*!"
He'd had about enough of this shit. "Good! Fine! I
never wanted to come back in
the first place, you bleedin'
psycho! I done my bit to make the world a better
place, and instead of a nice, peaceful eternal rest, I
got -"
Before he could complete his thought, the building
pitched in the opposite
direction, flinging him full speed, head first toward the
veranda windows and
their spanking new view of the pavement a few hundred
feet below.
"FUCK MEEEEEEE!" Spike screamed, and the world
went black.
~
Buffy lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, feeling
emptier than she ever
had in her life. And considering she had once cost Angel
his soul, sent him to
Hell, and got ripped out of Heaven by her friends, that
was saying something.
How did everything go so wrong? How could she have been
so stupid and selfish to
just assume Angel would understand everything? Of course
he was angry and
disappointed in her. She'd never bothered to tell him
anything about Spike,
because it was just too hard for her to even think about
- let alone discuss.
Angel didn't know the context of what happened. He didn't
know all of the good
things Spike had done. How he'd stood by her through some
of the worst times in
her life. All Angel knew was how Spike had hurt her.
Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference. Maybe the
problem was that, now that
Angel knew some of the details of her relationship with
his grandchilde, it had
finally sunk in that she'd been involved with someone who
he considered one of
his worst enemies. Maybe that knowledge was enough so
that he didn't want her
anymore. She was tainted in a way he couldn't handle.
Spoiled. Untouchable.
She'd believed him when he said it didn't matter - that
he loved her more, not
less, for her mistakes. Of course, he'd promised her more
than once that she
would never lose him, either... and look how much those
vows turned out to be
worth.
"Fine," she sniffled stubbornly to Mr. Gordo,
who'd been her confidante all
night. The old stuffed pig was soaked with her tears.
"Forget him. It's not like
I haven't had to do it before."
But she hadn't, had she? Through all those years...
through other lovers, even
through death, Angel had always been a part of her -
maybe the biggest part.
When she was in Heaven, looking down on the world she'd
died to save, it was
always his life she lingered on the most. God, how it had
hurt to see him so
broken, so lost. Those months he spent in the monastery
remembering, regretting,
punishing himself. The weeks of nights he hadn't fed or
done anything but laid
on his pallet, alternately crying, raging at the Powers,
or just staring blankly
into space, watching his memories of her play over and
over again, drowning in
the what-ifs. If there had been any reason she might have
wanted to come back,
it was to ease his pain.
And while she was in that space between worlds, she had
seen... everything about
her lover. Experienced every moment of his reign of
terror as Angelus. But even
with all that horror, all that cruelty, all that death,
her love for him never
faded even for a moment. She forgave him all the things
he could never forgive
himself, because she knew... who he had become was as
good as Angelus had been
evil.
So why couldn't he find it in his heart to forgive her?
A soft knock pulled her from her morose reverie.
"Come in..."
silhouette. The witch noted the weight of sorrow in the
darkness, and took a
moment to mutter an incantation to lighten it, as well as
the shadows
themselves, before she made her way in to sit beside
Buffy on the bed.
She took her best friend's cold hand. "Are you
okay?"
"Not really," Buffy mumbled.
"Faith told me what happened. Or... sort of. Do you
want to talk about it?"
Buffy sniffled and reached for a tissue. "I don't
know what to say." She blew
her nose loudly and then fell back on the pillows once
more.
"What happened, Buffy? What did Angel say to
you?"
The Slayer's tears once again began to fall. "He
said... he blames me for... for
forgiving Spike for what he did to me."
understand he's upset..."
"No. It's way worse than that, Will. He said he
doesn't..." Buffy swallowed
stiffly, trying not to totally break down again. "He
said he can't respect me
anymore. That the sight of me makes him sick."
The redhead closed her eyes in sympathetic pain, and more
than a little anger on
her best friend's behalf. "I'm sure he didn't mean
it. He's just being a big
jerk guy, like Xander said.
Angel loves you. You know that."
Buffy shook her head and sat up, tucking her arms around
her knees and huddling
in a defensive ball. "He doesn't. How can he? And...
I think maybe he's right."
"What? Buffy, no!" her friend cried. "What
happened wasn't your fault! It's not
fair of Angel to blame you, and it's not his place to
decide whether or not you
should forgive Spike!"
"Not the attack," the blonde corrected her,
"I know that I didn't ask for that.
No one does. And Spike didn't have a conscience, so I
can't hold him responsible
either. But the rest of it... that was my fault. The way
I kept going to him,
even when I knew how wrong it was. The way I used him. He
never said no, but I
should have known better. And then, after he got his soul
back..."
She pressed her face between her knees and rode out the
wave of pain and guilt
that slammed into her before she went on. "I told
everybody - including myself -
that I kept him around because we needed him to fight the
First. But... that was
a lie. I didn't let him go because I was afraid to be
alone. I needed someone
beside me - or I thought I did. And... I felt like I
*should* love him, you
know? Or I should at least try to... learn to. Look at
all the things he did for
me - he went out and got a soul, suffered all that agony,
because of what he
did. He thought that was all that was missing between us.
And he tried so hard
to be what he thought I wanted... How could I not love
someone who did so much
for me? I should have let him go. I should have been
honest and *made* him go.
It would have been the best thing for both of us. But I
hung on, and I kept
second guessing myself and twisting my feelings because I
thought I owed it to
him!" she sobbed.
"Buffy..."
The Slayer went on, "I know you can't make yourself
love someone. I knew that
from Riley. You don't make them stay with you in the hope
that maybe someday,
you will. I should have known. The fact that I had to try
so hard, and I just
couldn't tell Spike... that should have been all the proof
I needed! That's just
as bad as using him - treating him the way I did - when I
knew he wanted more!"
She paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Angel
doesn't trust or respect
me, because I didn't trust him... or respect
myself."
her closest friend had been holding inside herself for
years. And whether Angel
was being an insensitive jerk or not - and he *totally*
was - he had at least
finally gotten her to let some of her anguish go.
"I don't know what to do to make it right,"
Buffy mumbled sadly, "I don't know
how to tell him so he'll listen. I don't even know why I
should have to."
"You shouldn't,"
to... think about all of this. It's hard, Buffy. He's
missed so much in your
life... he's freaking out from dealing with so much at
once. When he realizes
that, he'll understand. I know he will."
"What if he doesn't, Will? How can I stand to lose
him again... especially like
this? No." She slid to the edge of the bed and
grabbed her sweatshirt off the
floor, her newfound anger urging her out of her funk.
"I'm going back over
there. We're going to talk this out if I have to chain
him up and hold a cross
in his face."
Her friend smiled at the return of Buffy's spirit.
"That sounds like a..."
Before she got the chance to complete her thought, the
apartment door crashed
open, admitting an extremely agitated Xander
and Dawn.
"Buffy, turn on the TV!" her sister cried.
Buffy snatched the remote off her nightstand and clicked
it on to one of the
local news channels. The terror they all beheld dropped a
bomb of silence on the
room.
Angel's apartment building stood in the background of the
shot - tilted at an
impossible angle - with the top four stories obscured by
an enormous,
all-too-familiar cloud of nothingness. The neighborhood
surrounding it was
engulfed in a raging storm.
"Oh my God..." Buffy gasped.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Ten
It took over an hour to make the twenty-minute trip
across town, thanks to the
traffic caused by fleeing Los Angelenos.
The neighborhood where what was left of
Angel's building stood was obscured completely by a storm
of such furious
intensity, the electrical imbalance created an
impenetrable wall of pressure
enclosing a full three blocks around the structure.
Buffy and her friends met Wesley, Fred, and a team of
Wolfram & Hart specialists
at the northernmost part of the barrier, where Wesley had
told them during their
brief and frenzied telephone conversation that the energy
was at its weakest.
Fred and some of her staff were busily firing weird
looking guns into the chaos
when they arrived.
"We're trying to re-balance the polarity of the area
so we can get closer to the
building!" Wesley shouted above the noise.
"What little we were able to
understand from Angel's call indicates the building has
shifted into another
dimension through a portal much like the one we faced at
the school."
"Angel can get a signal from another
dimension?" Xander jibed, "Man! I gotta
change my service!"
Buffy shot him a look, but blew off the tacky joke as she
and Wes quickly moved
to Fred's side.
"Are they okay?" she yelled at the ex-Watcher.
Wesley nodded. "From what we could gather, they were
fine. But..."
The Slayer stared at him. "But what?"
"There was... Angel mentioned something about being
caged... and fire."
Buffy's heart seized in her chest. "I have to help
them. Get me in there!"
"Gwen's on her way," Fred informed her.
"Now that we've got the area balanced,
with her power, she should be able to short out the storm
enough so we can get
to the building."
"Who's Gwen?" Xander
asked.
"Uh... she's a... colleague of Angel's," Wesley
explained hesitantly, "She has
an electrical imbalance in her body that essentially
makes her a living
generator and lightning rod."
"Ah. So, like Storm, then," he said in
understanding. Everyone looked at him
blankly. "X-Men? Superhero who shoots lightning? Oh,
forget it."
A literally sizzling "colleague", then. Buffy
frowned, not liking the sound of
that -- or Wesley's attitude about it - at all. But...
irrational jealousy
later. Angel-saving now.
Which she had to repeat a dozen times to herself when the
"colleague" in
question finally arrived. The word `siren' had never
better fit anyone Buffy had
met in her life. Although she was a much bigger fan of
the labels "slut" and
"skank" at the
moment.
The curvy redhead gave her a long, careful once over.
"I didn't think you'd be
so skinny," she commented lightly, "Angel
always struck me as a meat kinda guy."
"I've never heard him complain," the Slayer
shot back. "Jealous?"
Gwen gave her an appreciative smile. "Damn right, I
am. Okay, let's get this
show on the road."
The newcomer stepped up to the barrier, while Wesley and
Fred quickly herded the
others back. Within a few moments, the lighting streaking
everywhere focused
into a single burning arc that poured straight into
Gwen's outstretched hands.
She closed her eyes and concentrated, sending the
electricity shooting away from
her once more until, with a deafening crash, the energy
barrier disintegrated.
She turned and gave the assembled troops a grin.
"Open, says me."
It was decided that as few people as possible should
enter the eye of the storm,
as they weren't entirely sure what they would find on the
other side. Gwen,
Faith, Buffy, Xander, Wesley,
Giles and
toward the center of the block, fighting the hurricane
force gale every step of
the way.
They finally broke through the smoke and dust, but
instead of finding the bottom
floors of the now-evacuated apartment building, they found
a blank hole between
those on either side.
"Aw, man!" Faith cried. "There's nothing
there!"
Buffy took a deep breath. "They're there. I know
they are."
"But we can't get to them,"
a portal, or just... a hole."
Her best friend's face was marked with grim
determination. "I don't care. I'm
going in."
"Buffy, don't be foolish!" Giles snapped,
"There may be nothing on the other
side!"
She shot her mentor the same look. "Which part of 'I
don't care' didn't you
get?"
"Okay,"
this. "I'll enchant the ropes we brought, and tie
one around you. It should
extend indefinitely, and all you have to do is yank on it
when you want to come
back, and it'll pull you out."
"But what about the magickal
flux?" Wesley reminded them. "Spells are
unpredictable at best right now. We might not be able to
retrieve her."
Buffy looked at each of them solemnly. "Tie me or
don't. I'm going in there."
"
"Fine. Let's do it," her comrade agreed.
one of the spelled ropes. With a nod, the pair pushed
their way through the
storm toward the void.
When they reached it, both dove in without hesitation.
Buffy vanished.
But Faith and both ropes merely crashed to the sidewalk.
"Oh. That's not good,"
~
"Don't know why I'm surprised," Spike
complained, fidgeting a little to keep his
legs from falling asleep in the restricted space of his
cage. He cursed his new
circulation and peered out through the bars at the lake
of fire a few hundred
feet below. "You are bloody cursed, after all. Now
it's contagious."
Almost a football field across the cavern on the opposite
platform of the
enormous scale, Angel continued testing the integrity of
the structure. "I can
hear you, you know. Maybe you should try helping instead
of sitting there,
whining like a brat."
"Kiss my ass, ponce. It's
your fault we're in this mess to begin with. If you
got some damn anger management therapy, we wouldn't be
sitting here waiting to
plummet into a nice, toasty bath of FLAMES!"
Angel stopped tugging on the bars and glared across at
his fellow prisoner.
"Blame it on me all you like. But if you'd just
stayed dead..."
"Hey! I told you a dozen soddin'
times I didn't *want* to come back! It's not
like I called Triple A and booked a flight!"
The vampire shook his head. "I don't have time for
this crap." He jumped and
caught the top bars of the cage where the suspending
chains came together and
tried to squeeze a hand through the narrow space to reach
the hasp above. No
luck. "Damn it."
On some level, he couldn't help but appreciate the poetic
irony of their
predicament. When the apartment building tipped them
right into another
dimension like pieces in some cosmic Yahtzee
game, there had been an explosion
of glass and melting steel he was certain heralded his
final death. But when he
regained consciousness a few minutes later, and saw that
he and his grand-spawn
were balanced on a set of enormous scales over a pit of
fire, he had almost
laughed. If either one of them managed to escape their
entrapment - which
appeared impossible - the fulcrum of the scales was
weighted in such a way that
the entire contraption would come down.
Until he'd managed the cell call to Wesley, he had almost
resigned himself to
the fact that he had died and returned to Hell, and
awaited Ma'at's judgement
on
his soul versus Spike's.
He wasn't entirely certain he would win that contest.
"There's no way out of this thing," he
announced, yanking one more time with all
of his strength on the thick (and obviously enchanted)
bars. He had inspected
every inch of the thing, and found no weaknesses
anywhere.
"So, what, then? We just sit here and roast slowly
over an open flame until
crispy? That'll take a million fucking years!" the
blond cried.
Angel gave him a cold smile he knew the ex-vampire
couldn't see. "Don't worry,
Spike. I'm sure you'll starve to death first."
He settled into a crouch on the floor of his cell, and
waited. The construction
of the massive scales, and their obvious symbolism,
convinced him that there
was, indeed, a way out. Just not one he would like.
There was only one thing missing in this scenario: the
key player in the role of
Justice herself.
Buffy.
No sooner had he finished the thought then a flash of light
momentarily blinded
him, and when his vision cleared, there she was, standing
strong and defiant on
the cliff below and across the cavern. "I hate it
when I'm right," he grumbled.
~
Buffy stared up at Angel & Spike's weird prison, then
down at the fiery pit
below.
"I don't like this," she mumbled, then called
out, "Are you guys okay?"
"Other than feeling like the witch in the Holy
Grail, yeah!" Spike called back.
"What am I supposed to do here? Is there any way you
can get out?"
"No... the cages are enchanted," Angel replied.
"Buffy... did you just jump into
that vortex alone?"
"Um... not exactly. But I think I lost Faith
somewhere in the layover."
Angel suppressed a proud smile, despite the fact that she
couldn't see it. He
didn't want her to think he approved of her putting
herself in danger that way.
"Real smart, Slayer," Spike spoke his thoughts
aloud, "Dive into the big empty
and just hope you don't end up in the gullet of a dragon,
or, oh, hey! A pit of
fire, maybe?"
Buffy shrugged and pretended to turn toward a
non-existent exit. "I can go, if
you'd rather just hang out here."
"No, no! That's fine," the ex-vampire quickly
backpedaled. "Let's just get to
the rescuing."
"What've we got?" she called up to Angel,
knowing he would have spent their time
here meticulously examining the environment. He explained
his theories about the
schematics of the mechanism as she made her way around
the cliff, looking at
what parts of the scales she could see, and trying to
visualize what she
couldn't.
"I don't see any way of getting us out without
tipping the scales," he concluded
grimly. "Whatever spell is holding them together
prevents us from escaping
without killing us both."
"Then why am I here?" Buffy cried in fear and frustration.
"Why did whatever's
doing this even let me in?"
"It's like one of those fucked up Japanese game
shows, isn't it?" Spike pointed
out, "They dangle a few million yen in front of your
face and make you eat ten
pounds of donkey shit to get it. Nobody can win."
"Hey!" Buffy screamed into the cavern, hoping
whatever evil entity was torturing
them all might be listening. Why set up such a fun game
and not watch? "What is
this? What do you want from me?"
The silence hung heavy for a moment while the threesome
waited to see if there
would be a response. Then, a single word boomed, echoing
through the chamber.
"Choose," it intoned.
~
Buffy froze as that single word penetrated her brain.
"Wh... what?"
"One may live," the otherworldly voice
elaborated. "You must choose. The scale
is weighted by the darkness in their souls. Your decision
grants the light in
yours. The other will be destroyed."
Nausea gripped her belly, and she took an instinctive
step back, shaking her
head. "No. You can't make me do that."
"Then both will die," their host informed her.
"And the void will devour the
world."
Angel watched and listened in revulsion. The void? The
same kind void that had
forced he and Buffy through their petty differences to
stand together in the
face of certain death, and realize the true power of
their love?
Was this another test by whatever entity had reunited
them in the first place?
Was Buffy now forced to make this unfair choice because
he had failed to stand
by her in the face of Spike's return? Had his weak faith
doomed them all?
And suddenly, it all fell into place. Spike's
resurrection - the ghosts of the
past. This thing was laying open their souls, exposing
their most painful
personal issues before them in a way they couldn't
ignore, either in themselves
or with one another. Just as they had last time.
Wasn't Spike a perfect embodiment of all his darkest
fears? Hadn't the
ex-vampire's mysterious return brought out the very worst
in him? Hadn't he
turned out to be the one thing that could shake his
seemingly unshakable faith
in what he and Buffy shared?
"Choose," the voice repeated once more.
"Oh, for Chrissake!"
Spike cried. The irony of being brought back from the dead
just for this - to force Buffy to choose between the
vampire she loved, and her
comrade-in-arms... to rip her heart out yet again. To
squash her fiery spirit
flat between her heart and her duty...
Unfair didn't begin to cover it. And if he'd felt guilt
over anything before,
what tore through him now was a hundred times worse.
Buffy stared at the floor, crushed into paralysis by the
weight of her decision.
How could there *be* any light in her soul, if this was
its result? *She* had
done this - pitted Angel against Spike. Refused to
consider that maybe she would
*have* to choose -- not just for them, but for herself -
until some evil power
forced her to do it. She hadn't been open and honest with
either of them... and
now they were all going to die.
"Buffy," Angel called out, seeing her agony,
and endeavoring to take the
impossible choice out of her hands. "You have to
choose Spike. He's alive. He's
been given a second chance. You can't let that be
wasted."
"Oh, don't be such a fucking martyr!" Spike
shouted at him. "I was already
*dead*, you idiot! Besides, I'm not damn good for
anything anymore - I'm weak
and slow, mostly blind and deaf. And I never repented a
fucking *thing* that
I've done that didn't come with a reward attached. I'm no
better than I was
without a soul. You, on the other hand, have been busting
your enormous ass for
a hundred years trying to be a better person. So it's
pretty damn clear to me
who she should choose."
"Spike, stay out of this!" Angel roared,
"You've barely had a soul for a couple
of years - most of which you've spent dead - and you've
been human for all of a
week!"
"Buffy needs you, you idiot! You really think she
can doom you to death and live
with it afterward?
"She loves YOU! You're human. Whatever you might
have done in the past, that
makes you a better choice for her now," Angel cried,
his voice breaking. "I'm
just in the way. I can't give her what she
deserves."
"YOU'RE in the way?" the blond shrieked,
"You two were doin' just bloody fine
until I showed up. So you can just..."
"STOP IT! Both of you!" Buffy screamed over
their argument. "Nobody is going to
die, damn it! You're both important -- to me and to the
world! So shut up and
let me think of a way out of this!"
They did.
In the hard-won quiet, Buffy stepped back from the terror
and shame consuming
her heart, focused on clearing her mind, and took another
careful look at the
Scales From Hell. Examined the facts, and let the rest
fall away.
Angel was stronger, faster, more dexterous, and also
sturdier. Spike was
smaller, lighter, and easier to carry. If she could just
break open their
cages...
The best option hit her like a bolt of lightning... but
without the
heart-stopping and the frizzy hair.
Without another thought, Buffy ran to the wall behind
her, and with every ounce
of Slayer speed and strength she possessed, sprinted
straight toward the edge of
the precipice.
"BUFFY, NO!" Angel bellowed, clinging to the
bars of his cage, convinced he was
about the watch his love plunge to a fiery death rather
than be forced to
condemn either of them.
"Jesus H. Christ," Spike muttered, thinking the
exact same thing. But Buffy was
not committing suicide - intentionally, anyway. She flew
out over the
nothingness, nearly straight up in the air... hung there
for what felt to both
men like forever...
And then, with a clang that echoed fiercely through the
cavern, plunged to a
landing, clinging to the front of Angel's prison like a
monkey.
"Hi," she said with a grin, and he was
compelled to smile tenderly back. She had
chosen him, after all. Even if it was only for that
moment.
But she wasn't done. "Angel... when it comes to my
life... my heart..." she
said, "I always choose you."
With a groan that shook the chamber, the scales tipped
toward Spike's side. The
ex-vampire swore in every language - human and otherwise
- that he knew.
"You can't let him die, Buffy," Angel warned
gently. "You'd never forgive
yourself."
"I know," she replied, and flung her legs
outward away from the cage. She let
go, tucking herself into a ball spinning so fast that
even Angel couldn't track
her, then with a cry, shot her legs out and kicked open
his cage just as it
began to swing forward toward the safety of the cliff.
"Be ready," she said as she steadied herself
once more, and shimmied to the top
of the pen. A split second pause while she gathered her
strength for what came
next, and then she threw herself over the seemingly
endless divide once more,
towards Spike's plummeting prison.
A moment later, Angel hit the ground, but spun and hung
on to the edge of his
cage, digging his feet into the dirt to keep it from
springing back out over the
cavern. As he strained, he watched, spellbound, while
Buffy flew like some
supernatural trapeze artist, flipping over the binding
chain of Spike's trap,
and spun directly into its door. It sprung open, and
without hesitating, she
snatched the ex-vampire out, clutching him around the
waist, and flipped them
both back to the top.
She had only a blink to gauge the distance to the
suspending chain Angel was
struggling to keep steady. She didn't have time to
appreciate the fact that he
had instinctively known what she wanted to do.
"Hold on to me!" Buffy barked at Spike.
Without question, he wrapped himself around her like some
bizarre monkey, and
then they were rocketing through the air once more. He
watched his prison
disintegrate in the fire below.
"Fuck," he exclaimed weakly.
They hit the chain on the other cage with a force that
shook him to his bones,
and Buffy swung Spike around onto her back as she crawled
down the chain to
where Angel was waiting on the cliff.
"Hurry, Buffy! I can't hold it much longer!" he
grit out.
Spike closed his eyes, expecting death to claim him -
again - at any second. But
then, he felt Angel's big assed paws clutching the back
of his shirt and hauling
him off... and he was on solid ground at last.
"Oh, thank fucking GOD!" he shouted, falling to
his face on the rock and kissing
it with a passion he hadn't felt in years. In fact, he
spent quite a while doing
that, thinking he'd never loved anything in his life like
he did that cliff.
When he finally looked up to ascertain Buffy's fate, he
found her wrapped in his
grandsire's arms, and the latter's tongue so far down her
throat, he swore he
could see it poking through her kneecaps.
Again.
"Bloody Hell," he mumbled.
Buffy and Angel pulled apart, stared at each other for
exactly a second, then
chorused, "I love you. I'm so sorry." They
shared an intimate smile at the
synchronicity.
"UGH! Why didn't you just let me die a horrible, flamey dea.... Never mind."
Spike backpedaled, and crawled away to the far side of
the ledge to enjoy his
exhaustion, shock, and the joy of not being incinerated
this time in peace.
The lovers didn't even notice him.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Eleven
Now it was Angel who needed time.
Buffy and he both noted the irony of it with a bout of
weak laughter before he
left town on business the day after the earthquake. He
had needed to take this
trip anyway, he'd explained... the extra time and space
it gave him to sort
things out was just a happy coincidence. He'd kissed her,
told her he loved her,
and promised they would talk the minute he got back. So
Buffy wasn't spinning
herself into *too* much of a frenzy over his leaving
before they got a chance to
work recent events through together.
Haunting the Hyperion like some psychotic ghost, waiting
for a sign of his
return, and hassling Michael three or four... hundred...
times a day didn't
really count, did they?
It wouldn't be creepy stalking behavior unless he was
actually there, which he
wasn't. He was off taking care of some urgent something
or other in a dimension
far, far away, and there was nothing Buffy could do but
wait. And try to avoid
going completely insane.
After five days with no word, however, she was starting
to lose some of her
faith that all would be well, even with Angel's numerous
assurances. So after
her patrol with the seniors on Friday night, she decided
to do a little
detective work of her own.
Angel's hotel was easy to break into -- something she
planned to take up with
him... if she ever saw him again. She kicked in one of
the tiny basement windows
and squeezed inside, hoping none of the more... flexible
demon species were
watching. Angel probably couldn't count on all his
various digits and appendages
how many creepy-crawlies wanted to kill him. Maybe more
than she had.
She crept upstairs, trying to figure out what, exactly,
she hoped to accomplish
by this little felony. Well... maybe there were some
clues to how long he
planned to be gone in his room. For example, were both of
his leather coats
missing? That could signal a long trip. Was there milk or
blood in the fridge?
Only a couple of days, then. Sure. His room was the place
to start looking.
Or... maybe she would just lie around on his bed in one
of his shirts and sniff
his pillows for a while... like a completely *sane*
stalker freak.
"No, that's not creepy at all, Buffy," she
muttered to herself.
Either way, it was better than moping around the school
wondering if something
had been irrevocably broken between she and the love of
her life.
As she wandered through the dark, empty halls of Angel's
home, she considered
everything they had been through in the past few weeks
since Spike's mysterious
and explosive return from the dead. She reviewed every
move she had made, every
word she'd said, trying to make some kind of sense of it
all. If this was just
another lesson in the 'Buffy & Angel Learn Everything
The *Really*
Cosmic Short Course, then she needed to know exactly what
that lesson was
supposed to be. Using her best 'CSI' skills, she put
together the facts at hand:
Spike came back. Angel had a total meltdown. She turned
into a thoughtless,
tunnel-visioned bitch. Again.
Not much of a case, really. What were they supposed to
discover? That they could
still beat each other half to death with thoughtless
words? That she should be
crowned Bad Judgement Queen?
That Angel still had a raging demon inside him, so
close to the surface that he was still fully capable of
losing it and
slaughtering someone in a jealous rage?
All points they already knew too well.
So, here was the final exam on their Destiny, and Buffy
not only hadn't studied,
she hadn't even remembered to bring a #2 pencil.
"Great," she muttered at the numbers on Angel's
door: 419. He told her he'd
lived a few floors down for a while, but moved the year
she came back from the
dead. He never told her why, exactly - he just got that
faraway look he got
sometimes, and said simply that he'd needed a change.
Okay, so she didn't have the answer, she figured as she
dropped to her knees and
began to work the lock, but maybe she could look back at
the first question on
the test and build some context to help her wing this
one. The beginning of the
Confluence had forced them together when they had been
avoiding each other for
years. Having to defeat the vortex pushed them past their
defenses, and reminded
them once and for all of the very basic, fundamental fact
that they loved one
another - no matter how much time they'd spent apart. No
matter how much they
seemed to have changed. Like Angel said, they were bound
together in the core of
who they were. The trappings - the distance, the denial,
the details - meant
nothing in the face of how muuch
they cared about each other.
She felt the tumbler in the lock fall into place at the
same moment that she
realized where Spike's return fit into the equation. But
before she got a chance
to think it through fully, the door swung open, and Buffy
was looking directly
at Angel's silk-clad kneecaps. Her gaze drew upward to
find him peering down at
her with a sardonic half-smirk.
"Uh... hi. You're home," she observed.
"New hobby?" he inquired wryly, "I guess I
don't need to make you a key."
He offered her a hand. Buffy accepted and let him pull
her to her feet. She
didn't let go, but couldn't quite look him in the eye, either.
"I've been meaning to find out what the big deal is
about stalking, " she
mumbled, mortified at having been caught being such a
pathetic loser. "And...
breaking and entering... it's important to have a
secondary career choice."
Angel chuckled. "It's nice to know I'm not the only
one who has trouble with the
concepts of 'time' and 'space'."
She looked up at last, finding a warmth sparkling in his
dark eyes that she had
been afraid she would never see again. The relief of that
sight made her weak in
the knees. "Well, since we're here... maybe... we
can talk?"
He tugged her gently into the room and gathered her in
his arms.
"In a minute," he whispered, and lowered his
lips to hers. The kiss was tender
and sweet, like ambrosia after all these weeks spent in
emotional chaos so far
from one another. All of Buffy's worry and the hard-won
revelations flew out the
window on the satin wings of her joy in being with him
like this again. Feeling
so safe and small, yet so strong and alive, in his arms.
They drew apart slowly, but their gazes remained
entwined.
"Okay," he murmured, barely able to find his
voice, "Now I guess we can talk."
Drowning in the chocolate brown of his beautiful eyes,
Buffy whispered, "Talk?
Was there supposed to be talking?"
He smiled and smoothed his hands up over her arms, her
shoulders and neck, and
finally combed his fingers through her long, thick hair,
delighting in the
pleasure of being able to touch her once more. He deeply
wished they could skip
the talking entirely, but...
"I think that we should, don't you?" he said,
"I have some things I need you to
know."
Buffy nodded, reluctantly breaking her peaceful trance,
and moved past him into
the room. "Me too."
"I'd like to start, though, if that's okay,"
Angel requested, then gestured
toward the bed. "Why don't you have a seat?"
She sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the floor,
suddenly unprepared to
have this conversation, in spite of his warm greeting and
all of her conclusions
about what they'd just been through. Being fully open and honest -- with him
and herself -- didn't seem so simple anymore.
"I was actually just coming to see you," he
informed her. "I didn't expect to be
gone this long."
Buffy glanced up. "Where were you? Michael wouldn't
tell me no matter which of
his body parts I threatened to rip off. Did I mention
that he hates me? In fact,
he said he wouldn't 'divulge that information' even if
you hadn't told him not
to. Jerk."
"I was in the Tullhst
Dimension."
Her face scrunched up. "The Toll House
Dimension?"
"I'm starting to worry about you and your cookie
fetish," he teased
affectionately. "No. It's a pretty unpleasant swamp
world where I had to go and
retrieve the Senior Partners' tardy guest. It turns out
that he couldn't fully
open a portal from his side, and he got stuck. His
acolytes tried to get him out
without letting us know he was an incompetent idiot, but
when he started to
dissolve, he figured he should devalue his sterling
reputation a little bit. I'm
sorry I didn't get a chance to call, but even my cell
service isn't that good."
Buffy stared at him as one particular thing he'd said
registered. "Hold on. The
Senior Partners' *guest*? You mean... Spike
wasn't..."
Angel shook his head. "As it turns out, no. This
sorcerer I helped cross over is
an expert on space/time rifts. I guess they thought we
could use him to patch up
some of the anomalies resulting from the Convergence.
They say they don't know
anything about Spike... other than the obvious. Lilah found the whole thing very
amusing."
If she hadn't already been sitting down, Buffy definitely
would have had to
after that. "But... then... how? Why? And what was
the lesson Lilah said you
needed to learn?"
"Honestly? I don't know," he confessed, coming
to sit beside her on the bed. "I
suspect that she was just messing with my mind. But...
I've learned a few
things, nonetheless."
"Me too," she agreed again.
Angel took a deep breath and turned to face her. "I
owe you an apology. A lot of
them, actually. So, I'll start there. I was completely
out of line with the way
I've treated you since Spike came back. I had no right to
say the things I said,
or punish you the way I did. I'm deeply ashamed, and I
hope that when I explain,
maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive me for
being such a selfish
fool."
She shrugged. "You were pretty harsh. But... I get
it. I understand."
"No, I don't think you do," he disagreed,
"I didn't, really, until the past few
days. I was too blinded by my jealousy and bitterness to
see things clearly. I
thought I was so certain of us, that nothing could shake
that faith. But... as
it turns out, I wasn't as confident in myself as I liked
to believe I was.
Seeing you with him... and his being human... I guess
I..."
"Blew a gasket?" she offered.
"Yeah. To say the least. But that had nothing to do
with you, Buffy, and
everything to do with me. My fears. My insecurities. Some
part of me, deep down,
still didn't... believe I was worthy of you, I guess. And
I never would be, no
matter how many changes I made in myself... my
life..." He looked away from her
for a moment, trying desperately to find a way to explain
all the many things
he'd avoided telling her before now. All of the things he
had shoved so far down
into his seemingly endless well of painful memories and
broken dreams, he was
hardly able to draw them out anymore.
"I was envious, and petty, and cruel... and furious
that you had to experience
so much... pain. So much heartache alone. I blame myself
for that. I realize now
that I should have tried to be there for you more when
you..." he swallowed
stiffly, still barely able to talk about her death, even
after all this time.
"When you came back. All of that just... exploded
when I saw you with Spike.
He's a living reminder of all the ways I've failed you
over the years. All the
things I've never been able to be for you... or give to
you. All the things
you've had to face alone..."
Buffy grabbed his hands. "Angel, no. You had a life
of your own to worry about.
People who count on you. And I wasn't exactly honest
about what I was feeling. I
just told you that I was fine - how were you supposed to
know what I was going
through?"
"That's just it - I *should* have known. On some
level, I *did* know," he
insisted, "I saw it in your eyes. This... emptiness.
I just... I dismissed it
because I couldn't handle the complications. I was so
wrapped up in my own
problems, and... it was so hard to be that close to you,
after thinking I'd
never see you again on this Earth, and... wanting you so
much... Wanting to hold
you and protect you... and being denied that.
*Still*." He felt himself losing
control of his emotions, rocketing right into babbling
territory, but he
couldn't make himself stop.
Was
"It was easier simply to accept what you told me at
face value: that you were
fine, and you didn't really need me anymore. Acceding to
that was the only way I
could walk away from you again. I'm sorry for that, too.
That you were so
lonely, you felt like you had to turn to a creature you
hated for some kind of
comfort. That you were so low that you couldn't see you
were worth so much more
than that..."
Her eyes filled from the depth of sorrow in his
voice...the slight tremor of the
strong, cool hands she held in her own...and the
sentiment that she was more
valuable a human being than she sometimes gave herself
credit for. "We both made
mistakes, Angel. I should have known that I could trust
you - that you would
understand." Her voice broke, "But you were so
happy to see me. The way you
cried... when you held me... you seemed so relieved - how
could I take that away
from you after you hurt so much when I was gone?"
His gaze snapped to hers. "How did you know? I've
never... talked to anyone
about that."
Buffy smiled enigmatically. "I knew. I was always
with you."
His lip trembled as he returned a far wobblier version of
her smile. "I felt
that... and it made me miss you so much more. But
Buffy... there's something
else. Something I haven't told you that really set me off
when Spike..." He
tamped down on the little green monster that threatened
yet again. "When we
found out he was human. The first year I was in LA, I
found a prophecy in the
Wolfram & Hart archives."
"I thought you just started working for them a
couple of years ago?" she asked,
confused.
"I broke in to steal some other files, and this
particular scroll... called to
me, somehow. Wesley translated it - incorrectly, at first
- and found that... it
was about me. My mission... and my Destiny. Things I
would have to face. And the
result was that when I did what needed to be done... when
I'd saved humanity,
there might be a... a reward."
His speech dropped to barely a whisper on the last word,
and Buffy was suddenly
filled with equal parts joy, anticipation, and dread at
what he was about to
tell her.
"A reward?" she prompted softly.
Angel nodded.
"What... kind of reward?"
He looked deeply into her eyes, recalling with perfect
clarity the moment when
Wesley first told him... and his own deeply understated
response even as Buffy's
beautiful face filled his imagination, and his heart had
swelled with the first
real hope for the future he'd felt in years.
((That'd be nice...))
"'When the vampire with a soul fulfills his destiny,
he will Shanshu - become
human,'" he quoted verbatim. He had read the passage
so many times, it was
seared into his brain.
Buffy's eyes went wide, and she was struck breathless
with the shock of the
possibility. "Human. You... I mean... really?"
"Really," he replied.
Buffy looked away as the implications of what he was
saying tore through her
mind. Angel... human. His fondest, most impossible
wish. Her own long-lost
dream. The two of them, together... walking in the
sunlight. Having children,
raising a family... growing old together.
And then the other meaning dawned on her, and the dreams
went up in a puff of
smoke. Spike had returned from the dead as a human. Spike
had worn the amulet
Angel meant to wear, and helped her save the world as a
result. An unselfish act
of sacrifice that was humanity's salvation.
The kind of sacrifice Angel had made time and time again
for years.
"Oh God," she gasped. "He...
Spike..." She looked up at him frantically, "Spike
got your reward!"
Angel gave her a small, sad smile. "That was what I
was thinking, yeah.
Everything I'd always wanted, but could never have.
Mortality... you..."
She had done this. Buffy nearly collapsed with the pain
of the realization.
Angel had planned to wear that amulet. He had fully
intended to stand by her in
what promised to be the ultimate battle. He had offered
himself... shoulder to
shoulder, he was hers.
And she had turned him away. She had given Spike that
amulet. She had...
"I did it," she whispered in horror. "I
gave your Destiny away. You could have
been human, and I... Oh God!"
"No. Buffy, no," he objected as she broke down,
tucking his fingers under her
chin to raise her streaming eyes to his. The misery on
her face shattered his
heart anew. "I don't think that's true. That's part
of what I discovered while I
had these few days to think. When Spike came back human -
and you were so
obviously… attached to him, that was the conclusion I
came to. That, for
whatever reason, the Powers had chosen him to stand in
the place I thought was
mine - in the war against evil, and by your side. I had
stopped consciously
hoping for Shanshu - for a life
with you - a long time ago. This just brought it
all back, along with all my old insecurities, and forced
me to look at them
straight on. I automatically believed the worst - that
you wouldn't choose me,
because I was unworthy. Because I'd failed you, over and
over gain. Because,
deep down, I still didn't believe I could be part of
something so powerful… so
right. Even after everything that's happened since we
found each other again.
Then, in the cavern… you did choose me. And finally, I
recognized… I saw in your
eyes what you'd been trying to tell me from the start:
just because you love
Spike, that doesn't change the way you feel about me. I'm
still your Destiny,
even if I have to share your heart. And if I'm meant to
be human… to be with
you… it'll happen in its own time."
"But that's just it," she sniffled, reaching up
to tenderly stroke his face,
"You don't share my heart. Yes, I care about Spike.
I do. But you're the one in
my soul, Angel. You're the one I see standing by my side
when I dream about the
future. You're the one I need… the one I want to talk to…
spend time with. It's
you. It's always been you. It always will be."
Her declaration nearly drove him to tears of relief.
"You don't know how much I
needed to hear you say that. Buffy… I lost it the way I
did because… I can't
stand the thought of losing you - losing everything - to
Spike. I'm sorry that I
expressed that fear the way I did." He shifted,
sliding to his knees on the
floor before her, like the supplicant of some magnificent
goddess, and took her
tiny hands in his. But she was so much more than a
Goddess to him - something so
much better: a woman - a beautiful, flawed, strong,
giving soul who meant more
to him than almost any person he'd known in his life.
"You are… the most
amazing, brave, tenacious soul I've ever known. I do
respect you… and admire
you, and love you, with all of my heart. You are the
reason I am what I am
today. I would do anything to take back the things I said
to you the other
night, because none of it was true. I was ashamed and
angry *for* you, not at
you. Because... in all my shortsightedness... in all my
self-loathing, I've
never been able to be the kind of man... the kind of
friend... you deserve. I
want to change that. Starting now."
She sniffed softly, basking in the warmth, the sincerity
of his avowal. "Well…"
she whispered through her tears, "I guess you could
start by kissing me."
To encourage him, she dropped to her knees beside him.
When Angel turned to look
at her, she captured his beautiful face between her hands
and kissed him, long
and lazy, a touch of lips and tongue. Gentle, loving, and
full of promise and
forgiveness.
He could feel the kiss begin to tip… from sweet comfort
to that place where
coherent thought ceased, where facts and words no longer
mattered, and instinct…
hunger, and raw, fiery need took over.
It was habit, after all this time, for him to stop and
pull away when that fire
sparked. "Buffy…"
And it was just as automatic for her to stop reaching for
him and try to catch
her breath. Stop her heart from pounding right out of her
chest. Stop wanting
him so much that it hurt. Pull back before things got out
of…
They stared at each other until each broke into a slow
smile with the
comprehension that those actions *were* only habit now,
instead of the
world-saving necessity they once may have been.
"We don't have to stop…" he whispered aloud,
tracing a gentle fingertip under
her jaw and following the digit's journey with his eyes
until it met its
conclusion at the dip in the collar of her tee shirt. A
tug or two, and he could
see her… touch her… taste her…
"I think we should wait," she declared, and
immediately wondered aloud, "Who
said that?"
"You did," he replied, blinking in confusion.
"Why?"
His look of genuine bewilderment was so sweet, she almost
smiled, but decided
against it, because that would be even harder to explain
than her initial
demonstration of complete loss of reason. Which remained
completely
incomprehensible to her.
In what twisted alternate reality didn't she want to make
love with Angel?
Buffy frowned, her own confusion growing. "I'm not
sure. It just… seems like we
should."
Angel sighed and sat down beside her on the floor, their
backs braced against
the side of the bed. "I was actually thinking
something similar. I just chose to
ignore it."
Buffy glanced at him. He didn't seem upset or
disappointed at all, which was a
good… Hey!
"Why don't you want to?" she asked, her sudden
offense making her voice a little
shriller than she meant it to be.
"Oh, no. You said it first. The burden of proof,
therefore, lies with you," he
rejoined, waving away her inquiry before facing her with
a sly grin. "Besides,
who said anything about not wanting to?"
She nodded. "I know. It's not that I don't want to
either, because… hey, six
years waiting…" She banged the back of her head
against the bed in frustration.
"Maybe the time's just not right yet. Or maybe this
is some new screwed up
loophole in the curse where we *can*, but we *can't*. And
if that's the case, I
don't like it any better than the old one."
Angel gave her hand a tug, urging her to lay her head on
his shoulder. As much
as his body was aching to make love with Buffy, this
simple moment felt so
right… sitting here, just talking with her warm little
body tucked up against
him like this…
"There's no hurry. We can take all the time we
like," he assured her, peppering
soft kisses into her hair. "Tomorrow's fine."
Buffy laughed. "Tomorrow it is, then. But seriously…
what made you think that?"
"I don't know. I was kissing you, and then I thought
I had to stop kissing you,
and then I remembered that I didn't have to stop… it was
all very
disconcerting."
She smiled up at him from her perch on his shoulder.
"Maybe, now that we get to
decide for ourselves, we actually want to make a
conscious choice? Exercise our
free will?"
"Possibly. Or...maybe there are still things between
us that need to be
resolved. And for this to feel natural, we need to
address them first," he
theorized aloud. "I think I've said everything I
need to say..." Which wasn't
precisely true, of course, but he'd told her everything
he could… or was willing
to. There was still the matter of Spike's trying to rape
her that ate away at
him, but he didn't want to keep dragging her memory back
to that. Of course it
enraged him… of course he still didn't understand why she
would forgive such a
heinous crime. But it was her decision. Her forgiveness
to bestow. His
homicidal feelings about the matter were irrelevant.
And then there was Connor… but that, he was forbidden
from sharing. Even with
the mate of his soul.
Buffy chewed her lip, trying to imagine what remained
unsaid between her and
Angel. "I never answered your question."
He looked at her. "Question?"
"At the hospital, when we had that first fight about
Spike."
"I don't remember," he admitted. "It's all
sort of a blur of rage now."
"God, it was so important to you at the time!"
she reminded him, then got up on
her knees and settled between his, facing him squarely.
"You asked me if I could
honestly tell you I don't love Spike. And the answer is…
no. I can't. But it's
not the way you keep thinking. I can say, without any
doubt at all, that I am
not, and never have been, *in* love with Spike. I *am* in
love with you. I
should have told you that right away."
He sighed happily. "Say it again," he
requested, all but beaming up at her as he
pulled her to him once more and wrapped his arms around
her. "Tell me you love
me."
"I love you," she told him, never meaning it
more than she did in that moment.
"How much?" he teased.
"More than cookies. More than chocolate. More than ice
cream. More than shoes,"
she replied with a grin. "More than all of them put
together with a deep tissue
massage and a facial on top."
He returned it. "I love you too, Buffy."
She brushed a gentle kiss to his lips. "I want to
tell you everything about what
happened. Although... 'want' is probably too strong a
term... A lot of it is
bad. Okay - sadistic and twisted. Not a collection of my
more shining moments.
And you're really, really not going to like most of it.
But I don't want there
to be any more secrets between us, Angel. I think that's
what keeps getting us
into trouble."
Angel ignored the pang of guilt at all he hadn't…
couldn't… tell her, and
scowled. "I'm not sure I want to hear this."
"Well," she proffered, sitting back on her
haunches. "You can tell me about all
of your other women, if it makes you feel better. Then we
both have to endure
the torture."
"I don't think that's a solution I like much
better," he replied, then sighed in
resignation. "Okay. Let me make some tea first. And
find my whiskey stash."
They rose together, and Buffy tucked herself up on the
bed while he went to put
the kettle on.
"Normally, I'd be all 'Drinking Doesn't Solve
Anything' D.A.R.E. girl - probably
the caretaker of wild teenaged Slayers talking," she
called after him. "But in
this case, I think inviting Mr. Glenfidditch
to the gathering might not be the
worst idea."
"Single malt helps even the worst medicine go
down," he concurred. "You want
peppermint, right? With more sugar than deemed safe by
the American Dental
Association?"
Buffy smiled blissfully to herself, in spite of her
nerves and that little patch
of unsated lust still burning
low in her belly. Angel knew her so well. Loved
her so much. Even this, one of the most difficult
conversations she knew she'd
ever have, would be far easier remembering that.
"Perfect," she replied softly. "Just
perfect."
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter Twelve
Despite the barely two hours of sleep she'd gotten, Buffy
felt like a million
bucks when she got up for breakfast the next morning. The
discussion - and often
heated argument - between herself and Angel had been just
as trying as she'd
expected. There'd been the anticipated tears, occasional
shouting and throwing
things, and both of them had learned *way* more than they
ever wanted to know
about the other's 'romantic' lives while they were separated.
'Cordelia? Ugh! And I thought
my taste was questionable!' she recalled with a
shudder of revulsion.
But after all the conflict came the comfort, the holding,
and a copious amount
of relatively fierce 'Everything-But' style making out,
and now the air was
clear…er. As clear as it was
likely to get, for now anyway, and they were ready
to leave the past behind them and move on.
She felt lighter, somehow, having shared some of the
darkest secrets of her soul
with the man she loved - like she had finally shed that
heavy burden of pain and
guilt that had weighed her down for so long. There was
just one last
conversation she needed to have before she could finally
be free of it all.
Buffy found Spike where he spent most mornings, in the
courtyard thoughtfully
staring up at the rising sun from behind his thick
shades, smoking a cigarette.
"I thought you quit," she chided him. "You
do know being mortal means lung
cancer and emphysema are back on the menu…"
All she could see of his no doubt sardonic expression was
a cocked eyebrow.
Spike slid his left sleeve up, demonstrating that he wore
not one, but two
nicotine patches on his upper arm.
"I tried for an IV drip, but apparently, they don't
make one. Turns out two
packs a day for a hundred years makes the jones a bit more dire than the
recommended dosage covers," he drawled.
"Speaking of junkies…What're you doing
out here? I thought you turned to dust if you didn't have
fifty gallons of
coffee by now."
She took a seat on the nearby bench. "I thought
maybe we could talk before the
Pancake Wars begin."
Spike glanced at her for a moment before coming to sit
beside her. "The Great
Poofter called a bit ago. Only
vampire in the known universe up before sunrise.
Wanker."
Nothing like a nice, pre-coffee surprise to kick start
the day. "Oh? And…"
"He says he wants to talk to me, too," the
ex-vampire grumbled. "Think I'm gonna
need another patch for that one. And possibly a
flame-thrower."
"Well… if he didn't ask to meet you alone in a dark
alley at
he's probably not going to try and kill you again. That's
a positive, right?"
she suggested nervously. Angel had told her about the
effects of the truth
spell, and how much his deep desire to murder Spike had
shaken him. It shook
her, too.
He tipped his shades down to shoot her a look. "If
you say so, Pet. So… you
wanted to talk."
Buffy stared down at her hands folded in her lap. "I
think we should make some
things clear."
Spike chuckled. "Things are crystal clear, luv. Fear not. Old Will knows his
place in the scheme of things. Least as far as you're
concerned."
She looked him in the eye, and stated unequivocally, so
there could be no more
misunderstandings, "I love Angel. I always have. And
I always will."
He feigned shock. "No! You don't say. Christ, what
kind of blind idiot do you
take me for, Slayer?" he paused before adding,
"Don't answer that."
"I just… I wanted to make sure you knew. I do care
about you, Spike, and respect
you and even trust you," she went on, ignoring his
self-deprecating jibe. "And
on some level, I do love you. You told me once that
saying you loved me had
nothing to do with you… that you said it because of what
I am. What I do, how I
try… because you've seen the best and the worst of me,
and that you didn't want
anything in return for it. Well… that's how I feel. I
know things have been
tangled between us in the past. But if we're going to be
friends - and I really
want us to be - honesty is the only way to go. I'm sorry
for the way I treated
you, and I'm grateful for everything you did for me.
Maybe if I had said all of
this years ago, things might have been different. But for
all that…" she took a
deep breath, "You do know that part of our relationship
is over, right? Forever.
We're never going to be together like that again, no
matter what happens. I care
about you, but I don't love you that way. God, I sound
like I'm 12."
"You like me, but you don't *like me*-like me. I get
it. Hell, Buffy, I knew all
that the night I saw you and Liberace playing tonsil
hockey in that so-called
pagan temple. In fact, if we're being completely honest
here, I'd say I've known
it all along. I just didn't like to admit it." Spike
pulled off his sunglasses
so that he could look into her eyes, and she could see
that he meant what he was
saying. "I know you never gave me your heart and
soul, Slayer. Just like you
never gave them to Sergeant Flatline
back in the day. You're not put together
like that, sweet; no matter how hard you try. You give
yourself once, and that's
that. I always knew I was just a convenient substitute.
It was just easier to
pretend I was more."
She shook her head. "Maybe it started that way, but
you did become more than
that, Spike. You're my friend. You, in your own right. I
can't tell you how much
I appreciate all of the things you did for me back in Sunnydale - even with all
the bad stuff. Taking care of Dawn when I was gone…
fighting by my side… letting
me come to you and use you the way I did. I said I owed
you before," he began to
object, but she cut him off. "And it's true, no
matter what you say. I owe you
my friendship. Just know that you have it, okay?"
Spike nodded and gave her a warm, genuine smile.
"Sounds like a fair deal. More
than. And same goes, here. You've done more to change me
and my life than anyone
I've ever known. And for that, Buffy, I'll always get
your back. At least until
I drop dead from lung disease, or possibly a massive
coronary, the way things go
around here."
Buffy chuckled as she got up, feeling satisfied at last.
"I bet you'll end up
one of those legendary old fogies you always hear about
who drink like a fish
and smoke like a chimney every day of their lives, but
still die in their sleep
after having plenty of time to drive their
great-great-grandchildren crazy."
"Buffy," he called as she walked away.
She stopped and turned back, the sun a halo around her
golden head. "Yeah?"
"Thanks," he said softly, as the sight of her
still took his breath away. "It
means a lot that you told me what's what."
"You're welcome," she replied with a smile,
then turned and tossed over her
shoulder, "Good luck today. Don't forget, Angel
leads with his right."
Spike touched the still-soft bruise on his cheek, and
once again lamented the
loss of his vamp healing abilities. "Yeah, I
remember."
As he watched her walk away, he realized… her little
speech really did go a long
way toward making him feel better about being back --and
being a weak-assed
human again. She'd made him believe that maybe he *could*
be useful, after all.
Finally. Work toward being the better man she had always
insisted he could be.
If he lived through his meeting with Count Dickula, that is.
~
Michael glanced up from his dictation to find himself
face to face with the
notorious ex-vampire, 'William the Bloody'. Since he had
made the bleached-blond
Billy Idol wannabe's appointment himself, he wasn't
surprised to see him. But
all the stories he'd heard from the office grapevine made
it impossible for him
to be anything but wary at his appearance, nonetheless.
His esteemed boss outright hated the man - a rare
occurrence. This did not bode
well in Michael's esteem. He trusted Mr. Angel's judgement… even if his taste in
women was open to question.
"Spike here to see Ivana
Trump," the blond drawled, lighting up a cigarette.
Michael gave him a disapproving scowl. "We don't
smoke in this building."
The ex-demon smirked. "Don't give much of a shit what
'we' do, mate. Tell the
big pansy I'm here, won't you?"
Angel's assistant glowered at the man's back as he
wandered about the reception
area, smoking and examining the rare pieces of art Mr.
Angel had collected since
he took over the position. He took in the blond's tidy new Armani, and noted
that the old saying was true - you could put a monkey in
a suit, but he was
still a monkey. Or an ex-monster with a bad attitude and
about as much class as
a $10.00 streetwalker.
Reluctantly, he hit the intercom button. "Mr. Haverton to see you, Mr. Angel,"
he reported, not bothering to hide his distaste.
"Send him in," his boss replied with an
unmistakably woeful sigh.
Spike turned just in time to catch Michael's smug smirk.
"Mr. Angel will see you
now, *Sir*," he informed him politely, but his
meaning was clear, 'I hope Mr.
Angel eats you for lunch, now, Sir.'
"Yeah, thanks,
cooler and less about-to-die than he felt, pushed open
the imposing Double Doors
of Doom.
Angel's office suite was predictably posh - or fruity,
depending on who you
asked - with dark, deeply polished furniture and more
artsy-fartsy pieces and
rare books peppering the walls and every available surface.
Every one that wasn't buried under ten tons of file
folders, that is.
Angel didn't look up from his current file as Spike
entered.
"Nice place. Need to get your Betty out there to do
some filing, though," he
opened. "And what the Hell kind of stupid name is
'Mr. Angel', anyway? You
running a law firm or a queer strip joint?"
"Have a seat, Spike," Angel offered evenly, for
once glad to be in the power
position across the desk. He was far less likely to lunge
for Spike's throat
with all that space between them. He didn't want to mark
the mahogany.
Spike cocked a brow at his grandsire. "I'll stand,
if it's all the same to you.
Easier to get a running start that way."
Angel glanced up, regarding him without emotion.
"Sit," he commanded.
Spike sat. The chairs looked comfy, and… why tempt fate?
"I suppose you're wondering why I asked you
here," Angel began, acting for all
the world as if this was just another business meeting.
"Not really. Got an ashtray?" his guest
inquired, gesturing with the end of his
smoke.
Angel produced one from his desk drawer and slid it
across to him. "I have a few
things I'd like to discuss with you."
Spike took his time putting out the butt before meeting
the fag's temperate
gaze. "Don't apologize, sunshine. All's
forgiven."
A hint of a sneer appeared on the vampire's lips.
"Actually, apologizing isn't
on the agenda. I'm not sorry I gave you that beating,
Spike. Like you said… you
deserve far worse," He took a deep breath and tried
to rein in his temper a bit.
"I'm only sorry that it hurt Buffy. I think we've
both given her enough pain,
don't you?"
The younger man sat back in the chair, hands folded over
his stomach in a
posture completely incongruous with his expensive
clothes. Angel noted that he
still wore his Doc Martens. "Fair to say."
Angel nodded. "That's part of why I asked you to
come. You'll be working at the
school with Buffy and the others, and obviously, so will
I. So we have no choice
but to make some attempt at a truce. For her sake, if
nothing else."
"Why, that's mighty diplomatic of you, Ghandi," Spike snarked,
"By 'truce', you
mean no more slamming my head into walls or grinding my
rib cage into talcum
powder, right?"
The vampire took a moment to resist the urge to start
shouting, and replied
coolly, "If you ever hurt Buffy - or anyone at the
school, for that matter - any
agreements we come to here willl
very quickly become moot. Buffy may trust you
and forgive you for the things you did to her, but make
no mistake - I never
will. Letting you live, and trying to control my ongoing
desire to make you pay
are the only compromises I'm willing to make. And believe
me - they don't make
me happy. But for Buffy, I'll do it."
Spike smirked, "So is that a yes, or what?"
Angel leaned closer to him, his voice dropping into a
more menacing tone. "Your
first part of this truce is to watch your smart mouth.
I'm fed up with your
attitude."
Spike almost lost his lunch, he laughed so hard. "So
you're saying I have to be
*nice* to you? Like Hell, mate! I've hated your guts for
a century and change.
That's sure as fuck not gonna change, now. Especially
now!"
Angel got up and moved to look out his favorite window,
his hands clasped behind
his back. He was determined to take this discussion
seriously, even if the other
participant wasn't. Struggling to accept Spike's presence
in their lives was
impossible enough without him making it even more so with
his incessant goading.
He pressed on.
"I know that you're in love with Buffy. And no doubt
you've got it in your
twisted brain that I stole her from you. But she was
never yours to begin with,
any more than she was mine. She's a person, not a piece
of property, and she
follows her own path." He turned slowly to face
Spike once more. "And I am well
aware of your feelings towards me. I have no illusions
that we can - or should
be - friends. But it's not fair for us to constantly put
Buffy in the middle the
way we have been."
"Speak for yourself," Spike snorted, "I'm
not the biggest asshole in this
scenario."
"You've done your part," Angel reminded him.
"And in case you're thinking that I
might not stick around, and you'll be in a good position
to take my place at
Buffy's side - think again. Buffy and I are together -
the way it should be -
and that's not going to change. So, if you're staying
here because you imagine
you have a chance in Hell with her, you might as well
leave town right now. I'll
book you a flight, first class, anywhere you want to go
in the world. Set you up
with a job, an apartment, all the money and resources you
could possibly need to
start over."
Spike stared at him, dumbfounded. "Are you trying to
buy me off?"
Angel held his gaze. "That's one way to put
it."
"That's… a pretty damn good offer," the
ex-vampire pondered aloud, "I'd be hard
pressed to say no to a set-up like that."
"Then take it and get out of our lives."
Angel's barely veiled jealous insecurity gave Spike a
very big happy, and put a
lock on the answer he'd already decided to give.
"Not bloody likely. I'm fine just where I am."
The vampire nodded. "That's pretty much what I
expected you to say." He reached
into his top drawer and tossed a file from it across the
desk. "And this is my
plan for dealing with that response."
Spike glanced at it, them back up at Angel. "What
the Hell's this, then?"
"It's a contract, Spike," Angel answered,
"I want you to do some work for
Wolfram & Hart."
The blond's mouth dropped wide
open. "You… You. Want me? To work for YOU? Have
you taken up smoking crack in the past couple
years?"
Angel reclaimed his seat with a pleasant smile. "On
occasion I may need a
contractor who can think like a vampire, but isn't
one."
Spike scowled in distaste. "Think I'd rather work
for Dr. Van Helsing. Although…
I guess that joke's not funny anymore, is it?"
"I would pay you substantially more than you'll be
making at the
for working only per diem," he explained, "It's
money they really need, but
Buffy won't take it from me directly. You can help them
that way, as well as
helping me."
"And what's the catch?" the other man queried,
in no way about to assume that
Angel just all of a sudden wanted to give him a lucrative
job out of the
kindness of his dead heart.
Angel smirked. "The contract has a special clause in
it. It states that part of
your duties as a Wolfram & Hart employee includes
protecting Buffy, Faith, and
any other members of the Slayer line from any and all
harm that might threaten
them. Including you."
"Or you'll what, not pay me?" the blond
questioned with a sneer.
"For starters. You can have an independent attorney
read that over, of course,
but I can tell you - Wolfram & Hart has been known to
levy harsh penalties
against employees who breach their contracts. The
Enforcement Division is… very
meticulous about their work." The tone of his
statement, though the words were
vague, left little of the implication to Spike's
imagination: Cross Angel and
die.
"You really expect me to sign this?" he
exclaimed, "Give you permission to rip
my guts out if you don't like my behavior? You can go get
fucked, mate. I may be
slow, but I'm not crazy." He tossed the thick packet
back at his grandsire.
"There's more." Angel opened to the last
appendix of the contract and slid it
back. "That final clause restricts me and anyone who
represents me from directly
or indirectly causing you any physical or magickal harm, so long as you abide by
the terms of the contract. Which I think is a fair
exchange, don't you?"
Spike read the passage for himself, then glanced up once
more, wide-eyed.
"You're serious. I can kick your ass, but you can't
kick mine?"
"You can try," Angel replied dryly, his smirk
turning a touch more evil. "But I
wouldn't recommend it."
Spike skimmed through the forty or so pages of the
document, checking out the
colossal salary and benefits it detailed. It really was a
sweet deal - he was
protected from the crazy bastard's penchant for jealous
revenge, and all he had
to do was promise not to hurt Buffy or the other Slayers
- which he had no
intention of doing anyway. And, he noted, the contract
made it explicit that he,
Spike, could turn down any job with no penalty except not
getting paid. Plus,
the dosh really would go a long
way toward helping Buffy's impoverished school.
He shrugged. "Got a pen?"
Angel gladly handed over his favorite gold-plated Cross
pen, and suppressed his
nearly jig-inducing glee over the clause he hadn't
explained.
The one that made the contract null and void if Spike's
lips came within three
inches of any part of Buffy's body - except her fists.
Secure in his relationship he might be, but Angel was
nobody's fool. A little
backup plan never hurt anyone.
Sometimes it was good to be the boss.
~
The Last Cut is
the Deepest by Ducks Chapter 13
"So you… cursed Spike's lips," Buffy recapped
at the end of his confession.
"Seriously?"
Angel nodded - and still didn't regret his petty,
childish ruse. He figured it
was a fair compromise, considering he was restricted from
giving Buffy's
ex-lover the rest of his well deserved beating-to-death.
Was he lacking in
spiritual generosity, and quite possibly breaking a few
of his own codes about
helping others when it came to Spike?
You betcha. And he was
perfectly comfortable with his own hypocrisy.
Her expression was somewhere between amused and
disapproving. "That's really
twisted, Angel."
"I told you I got some satisfaction from our bargain
- besides making sure Spike
knows I won't let him cause any more trouble."
He loosened his tie as he flopped back on the bed. It had
been a long few
months, that was for certain, and it didn't promise to
get simpler anytime soon.
But at least things were better between himself and
Buffy… that made anything
they had to face that much easier to bear.
She stayed where she was, staring down at him, arms
akimbo, frowning in that
adorable way she had.
It was good to be home. Angel smiled.
"Uh-huh," she went on, "And he just signed
it? Without reading the whole thing?
Something that came from *you*? God, my voice is
shrill."
Angel winced. "It really is when you get like
that."
She gave him a fierce pout. "Like what,
exactly?"
"Like indignant," he elaborated quickly,
grabbing her hand, cradling it against
his chest as he closed his eyes. "Do you want to go
get some dinner?"
"No," she vetoed, and plopped down beside him.
"I think I'm still sort of
stunned into paralysis right now."
"Because you think I made a Devil's Bargain with
Spike?" he shrugged, "I don't
see why. It's a perfectly fair arrangement, and I didn't
even make him sign it
in blood."
Frowning, she replied, "I don't know. I guess I
never thought of you being so…"
"Petty? Childish? Obsessively over-competitive?
Overprotective? Possessive to
the point of being scary?" he guessed, neatly
listing his many Spike-related
character flaws.
"Yes," Buffy answered honestly, "I mean… I
thought you had… I don't know… honor
or integrity or something. You're 250 years old, and this
is like 3rd grade
stuff - at
He cracked one eye open to peer at her. "You asked
me to give Spike a chance,
and to have some faith in you. I'm doing both. I'm sure
you're quick enough to
stop him before his mouth gets anywhere near you, right?
How is that
diabolical?"
She gave him an 'are you kidding me?' look.
Angel turned on his side and gazed down at her gravely.
"I want you to be safe,
that's all."
Strangely enough, even with Angel's slight bout of
adolescent boy-ness when
drafting Spike's contract, she believed him. Really, he
was entitled to a modest
amount of pettiness, wasn't he, since in the end, he was
doing the right thing?
And knowing full well that bringing up the oft belabored
point that she was the
Primary Vampire Slayer and well able to take care of
herself was mostly useless,
she decided to let him have his smidgen of old-fashioned,
chauvinistic comfort.
For now. Angel had to work out his feelings about Spike
in his own time.
"Okay," she finally replied, "I mean,
really - how can a girl say no to that?"
Angel gave her a suspicious look. "Like you usually
do."
"Well," she explained, snuggling closer to him
and tucking her head into the
crook of his arm so she could play with his collar.
"Maybe I appreciate being
protected a little more than I used to. I mean… a big
part of my problem was not
being able to lay it down and let somebody else carry for
a while, right?"
Angel softly kissed her forehead, pleased at the change
in her once-rigid
independent attitude. "Right."
"So, okay, you threw a mean little testosterone
whammy on Spike - I'm not
entirely good with that. But the rest… everything that's
going on is just… too
much for only me. Knowing you're there makes everything
else seem easier. I
trust Spike, but I understand that you don't. And as long
as he behaves himself,
which we want him to do anyway, everything will be
fine…"
"Mmhm," Angel agreed,
and kissed the tip of her nose.
"It's really harmless, when all is said and done.
And if it keeps you two from
killing each other, it's actually of the good."
"Absolutely," he concurred, and began a slow
march of kisses around the line of
her jaw.
"Angel?" she asked once he had made his way to
gently licking the veins in her
neck, sending a blissful shiver up and down her spine.
"Mm?" He flicked his tongue into the hollow at
the base of her throat, causing
her to instinctively wind her fingers in his thick, soft
hair.
"Are you trying to shut me up?"
He paused to flash her a grin. "I wasn't sure if
you'd notice."
She narrowed her eyes at him, but couldn't contain her
smile, making the glare
mostly ineffectual. "This is important."
"I know," he murmured, trailing his tongue
slowly across her collarbone. "That's
why I want you to stop talking."
Buffy laughed at his gentle stubbornness, but pretty
quickly forgot what had
been so significant about their conversation to begin
with when his hands began
to roam, and his mouth with them. He teased one nipple to
a diamond-hard peak
with a slow circle of his fingertips, then bent down to
suckle it through her
tee shirt. A tingle claimed her entire body, rushing
outward from that single,
aching point. She pushed him away enough to yank off his
tie and begin
frantically working the buttons on his shirt.
"That's enough waiting. I need to feel you,"
she gasped, "I need your skin
against mine. Now."
Angel reached down to still her hands, his expression
sober. "No more talking
about Spike?"
Buffy smiled, brushing the smooth, pale skin she had just
exposed with a
fingertip. "Who?"
With a chuckle, he released her hands and dove down to
plunder her mouth while
she finished stripping off his shirt. He sat up and let
the silk fall away,
gazing deeply into her eyes as he smoothed his hands
beneath hers and up over
the warm skin of her belly before cupping her breasts. He
felt her heart thunder
beneath his palm, and his own preternatural pulse take up
the same frantic
rhythm - and instinctive answer to her body's primal
call. He pulled the shirt
up over her head, revealing the soft lines and curves of
her torso to the cool
air and his hungry gaze.
"God, you're so beautiful…" he whispered,
taking time to trace the outline of
her magnificent form with his hands: her cheeks and chin,
her fine neck and
shoulders, the rosy pebbles of her hard nipples, the
tight muscles of her
stomach. Her fair skin flushed with pleasure, and he
could see the blood rushing
through her veins, the scent of her growing desire a sweet,
musky incense to his
heightened senses. A vampire aphrodisiac - the very best.
"I'd forgotten how
your body comes to life when I touch you."
Buffy sighed deeply, melting under his touch, unable to
respond, she was so lost
in the sensual exhilaration of his attention. How long
had they waited for this
- to be able to let go together? How many millions of
years had she wanted him
just like this, and been denied? She ran her hands slowly
up his muscular back,
brushed over the cut of his broad, strong shoulders, and
wondered all over again
at how miraculous his body was. Smooth, cool and hard
like the finest chiseled
marble, and yet pulsing and shivering with life above
her.
"Angel…" she whispered, "Yes…"
The breathless gasp was a gift she gave him - a
benediction on the beauty of
this long yearned for moment. He bent to nurse at her
breasts, nipping and
licking until she whimpered with joyful need, her hips
thrusting fiercely into
him, demanding he bring her release from the sweet
torment.
He smiled to himself - they had waited so long for that
precious surrender, he
was loath to have the journey be so short… in spite of
his own body crying out
in starvation for hers. Just the sensation of her soft,
warm body against his
brought a throbbing ache to his groin, urging him to meet
her thrusts… to seek
that final connection even through the barrier of
clothing still separating
them.
Angel slid down her body, slipping his hands down her
sides and claiming the
muscles of her rear as his lips trailed cool fire down
the center of her form.
He tugged her jeans down, carefully licking and kissing
each new inch of heated
flesh he revealed: the curve of her hip, the hollows of
her inner thighs, that
sensitive place at the back of her knees, her tiny
ankles, and finally, every
millimeter of her fine feet. He drew each toe into his
mouth, one by one,
sucking them gently, flicking his tongue in between, and
by the time her pants
were fully gone, Buffy was gripping his shoulders
fiercely enough to draw blood,
chanting his name like some fervent devotee's prayer.
He repeated his journey in reverse until he reached the
juncture of her thighs,
and buried his face in the warm, furry mound she kept so
carefully trimmed,
drinking in the ambrosial musk of her femininity, then
drew his tongue in one
long, slow stroke over the cleft at her center.
Buffy cried out, clutching desperately at him, tangling
her fingers in his hair
to urge him deeper. It seemed like an eternity since
anyone touched her with
such tenderness - and she could let go, trusting Angel
would take care of her.
She had known the fire of lust… the detached pleasure of
a well-worshipped body
- but only Angel could give her both passion and the soft
dissolution of true
lovemaking, where everything she was surrendered to
everything he offered.
Angel gently parted her thighs, revealing the heat of her
most sacred, secret
place, already wet and pulsing, the flushed flesh calling
to him to taste… to
feast. He slipped his thumbs into her, tenderly peeling
open this blessed fruit
and bent to indulge in her sweetness.
His cool tongue dipped into her fire, plunging deep,
drawing her juices out and
flicking tantalizingly over her clit in long, lazy circles,
each caress a new
shock to her system. A new spark in her blood. How could
he know so well just
how to caress her - just went to lick, when to nibble,
when to suck - when they
had spent so little of their time together in physical
intimacy? Was this part
of what he'd meant when he said their essences knew one
another? Did his body
just instinctively know what hers needed?
It didn't matter. All she knew was that she had never
felt this washed away,
this utterly consumed by a man's touch, and when Angel
slipped two fingers
inside of her and sucked her quivering nub with gradually
increasing pressure,
it was all she needed.
Buffy went off with a frantic cry as she came, arching
off the bed over and over
again as Angel continued to devour her, and the pleasure
finally tripped over
into near-pain. He kept nuzzling her thighs, kissing her
belly, lingering on her
still throbbing lower body until she rested her hands on
his shoulders and
pushed him over onto his back.
He grinned. Buffy had never exactly been shy when she was
younger, but
inexperienced enough to usually want him to take the
lead. As she straddled him,
holding his gaze with her own passion-heated one, and
began working on removing
his pants, he was glad to discover yet another wonderful
way that his beloved
had grown.
He hissed as her hot mouth closed over him, convulsively
tangling his fingers in
her hair.
"Jesus, Buffy," he gasped, trying to hold back
from thrusting deep into her
throat.
She glanced up, winked at him, and licked his erection,
long and slow from head
to root and back again, her strong, gentle hand cupping
his balls, rolling them
slowly, then brushing feather soft circles on the
sensitive flesh with her
fingertips. She licked her way back up, and in one smooth
motion, swallowed him
whole, circling his girth with her fingers, stroking in
time to her mouth's
intense work on his head.
He felt pleasure like nothing he could remember rocketing
through his
bloodstream, burning away any lingering doubts or worries
he might have had.
Or patience. He sat up and pulled her toward him until
she straddled his lap,
his erection pressed up against her gently curved belly.
Their eyes met and held
as Buffy rose up to her knees, stroking him as she guided
him to her, slipping
his cock up and down her steaming cleft, soaking him with
her pleasure before
taking him that first inch inside.
They both gasped at that nascent contact, and their
wondrous gazes remained
locked as Angel rested his hands on her hips and slowly
eased her onto him until
she couldn't take him any deeper.
Buffy closed her eyes and gave a shuddering sigh.
"Oh, Angel… you feel… so…"
"Yes," he whispered, holding back from that
first thrust so that he could
memorize this moment: the way her kiss-swollen lips
parted… the way her hair
fell like a silken curtain over her breasts… the warm
scent of her skin… and the
way her body welcomed his, sharing its life, its heat…
She finally gazed at him again, her mossy eyes gone
smoky, and braced her hands
on his shoulders. She rose up once more until he was
almost all of the way
outside her body… and slid, slowly and lazily, back down
his length.
Angel moaned, thrusting into her, but letting her control
the pace.
Buffy rode him like that… with agonizing care, gripping
him with her inner
muscles each time she ascended. She had forgotten he was
so big… filled her so
completely, so perfectly, she could feel it in her heart…
her soul. And she
wondered, briefly, before the last bit of coherent
thought ceased, how she could
ever have wanted anyone else inside of her.
He opened his eyes. "You… you're amazing. God…
Buffy…"
"Mmm," she moaned,
letting her head fall back as she increased her pace just the
tiniest, concentrated bit. The hunger only grew… the need
to have him deeper,
harder, faster, now like an inferno consuming all her
carefully laid plans to
drive him slowly insane before she lost control. She
arched back away from him,
flying on the wings of this perfect union - this flawless
bliss. Lost in being
one with him at last.
Angel reached between them, watching her as he slipped a
finger in to caress her
clit, stroking in time with her increasingly frantic
thrusts until her inner
muscles spasmed around him,
gripping him, and she gave an ecstatic cry as she
came again.
The sound of her jubilant wail… the feel of her
surrounding him so completely…
ripped the last of his restraint to shreds. Years of
dreaming, of denial, of
want and need tore through him, and with a growl, he
flipped her onto her back
beneath him and drove, deep and hard, into her.
"More! God, Angel! Harder!" she shouted,
digging her nails into the firm muscles
of his rear. "Please! PLEASE!"
"Uh… Buffy… I love you so much," he cried,
leaning up so he could look into her
eyes as they climbed the last crest of pleasure together.
"I've needed you for
so long… like this… part of me…"
She caressed his beautiful face, and felt her eyes fill.
"Me too. I never
thought… I'd be with you again…"
He slowed his thrusts until their joining because a
languid, sensual dance, and
he slid in and out of her in perfect rhythm with her
pounding pulse. She met
each move he made in kind - each kiss, each touch, every
relaxed, stirring
thrust, until she felt as though they had truly become a
single being… at last.
This new rapture peaked in a slow, rippling wave, taking
her gently from the
inside, radiating outward until both of them trembled
with the ecstasy of it,
and the blissful strain of struggling to make it last.
Teetering on the edge of a feeling she had never
experienced before, Buffy
cupped his face between her hands. "It's… only been…
you, Angel. Ever. Always,"
she vowed breathlessly, "Come with me. Let go with
me. I need you. We've waited
long enough."
Her gentle words rocked him, and Angel leaned down to
claim one last, soul-deep
kiss as the wave broke, shattering them both into a
billion shining pinpoints of
light.
"I love you, Angel," she whispered as she floated
into a sated rest she'd waited
a decade to take, their bodies still entwined, and their
hearts singing
together.
"I love you too, Buffy," he replied, kissing
away the single tear that slipped
down her cheek before wrapping her in his arms. "Forever.
No matter what."
And this time, he meant it without reservation.
~
The End.
Stay Tuned for Part III of the "Scratch"
series, "Ricordisi
Di"