The Homecoming Trilogy:
Part Three: The Fires of Heaven and the Flames of Hell...
by Ducks

Part 1 - Complacency

"Because, sir, to be blunt, the last time you became complacent about your existence turned out rather badly."
– Giles, "Amends"

"Ehem!"

I ignored the sound. I was with Buffy, in the Dreaming, and we were talking about football… American football, that is... a game I never quite got...

I turned when I heard the sound again… Doyle, clearing his throat.

"What is it?" Buffy asked, looking around. Of course, she couldn't hear what was going on in my reality…

"I have to go," I said, looking back at her. I smiled and reached out to touch her hand…

I opened my eyes. Doyle stood in my office doorway, grinning. I’d fallen asleep, hands in my arms, on my desk. It seemed I did that a lot these days, letting sleep take me when usually I was most active, in the dark of the night. That was when Buffy slept… when we could meet, in our dreams…

"Good dreams, I take it." He said. His sneer, his lilting Irish brogue, and his smart-ass tone, grated my nerves.

"What to you want?" I snapped at him. Nothing could piss me off more than an interrupted Buffy dream.

"Just checking in. Haven’t seen ya in a while."

"I’ve been busy."

He came in without invitation, made himself comfortable in one of my chairs, and lit up a cigarette.

"Don’t do that in here." I said, for the millionth time.

The demon laughed, "Afraid of a little second hand smoke, are ya lad?"

I scowled at him. "It smells filthy."

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

"Where the hell is Cordelia?" I shouted.

"Think she’ s in the loo…" Doyle said absently.

‘Probably fixing her makeup.’ I thought with yet more irritation. This was not going to be a good night. I picked up the phone, "Johnson-Starr." I said, without conviction.

"Hi."

My heart jumped.

"Buffy… hi…"

"Where did you go?" She was asking about my abrupt departure from our dream. It was the best way for us to be together, for now… less pressure than live visits, more personal than letters or the phone… I was still thinking through what my new state of being meant to me… to us… And I couldn’t seem to really talk about it with anyone… not even Buffy, who needed to know most of all.

"Doyle’s here." I told her, hoping my tone expressed to him how much I wished he wasn’t.

"You were asleep in the office?" She chuckled, "You’re so funny… Well, I just wanted to make sure you were okay…"

"I’m fine." I was better, just hearing her voice…

"Remind me to finish explaining a touchback to you, later…"

I laughed. "I will. I think I’m getting it…"

Doyle’s eyebrows lifted, his grin widened. I bared my teeth at him.

"I can’t believe you’ve been around for so long and never got into football… Hey! Don’t you have a secretary? Where’s Cordy?"

"At the mirror, where else?"

"I heard that!" She called from the other room, returning from her trip.

"Yeah, well, I don’t pay you to look pretty!" I shouted back.

"So you SAY." She said, and sat back at her desk.

I heard Buffy laugh, and the last of my irritation melted away.

"Figures." She said, "Well, I better go. I have to get some sleep. Chem test tomorrow."

"You do that. Good luck."

"Angel?"

"Yeah."

"I love you."

I felt the words wash over me, and the accompanying smile overtook me like a tidal wave. To hear her say that… to feel it might be okay for her to mean it…

"I love you, Buffy. Be safe."

"You too." She said, and the line went dead. I listened to the dial tone for a moment, then hung up and looked back at Doyle with a whole new attitude.

"So. Did you come here for any other reason than to annoy me?" I finally smiled at him.

He chuckled.

There’s a park not far from my office. I patrol it sometimes on my way home, late at night. It’s the perfect place, dark and deserted, for an ugly scene… for a serene walk to quickly become a horrible death…

But toward the back end of the park is a pond… a place that feels different, entirely, from the rest of the area. Magickal, almost… water fowl of every imaginable variety make their home there, floating peacefully in the ripples they create on the water…

Sometimes I sit on a bench nearby and feed them stale bread, or just watch as they float along, dozens of them, without a care in the world. They have distinct social groups that band together as they swim. Ducks with ducks, geese with geese… the natural order prevails…

But every now and again I notice one pair that swim alone, together, far from the rest. An odd pair, a mismatched pair, and yet they seem somehow perfectly right together. An enormous swan, black as pitch, and an adorable little white duck. They paddle along the edges of the pond, not interacting with others of their own kind, perfectly content with one another’s company…

They remind me of myself and Buffy. Stupid, I know, but… there we are… two oddballs in a world full of oblivious, cookie-cutter people. A mismatched pair, but one that somehow clicks.

I’d been spending a lot of time at the pond, since I came back from Sunnydale. There was so much to consider… so many things for me to think about… heavy decisions to be made…

Since the Gypsy had revealed that my soul was bound to me, I felt like my innermost self was more completely divided than ever. Half of me rejoiced – felt sure that my punishment had finally come to an end… that my time in hell had granted me redemption, and that my eternal reward… or at least, my temporary one… would be to be able to be with Buffy again, finally and completely, for the rest of her days. With the danger of me losing my soul in my love for her gone, what more was there to keep us apart? That half of me, that hopeful half, thought, "Nothing."

But there is much more to me than that hopeful young man. The rest of me is older, wiser, more scarred from years of pain, gifted (or cursed?) with more clarity of vision. It was the part of me that made me leave Buffy in the first place… that paraded all the reasons we couldn’t be together before me, like some morbid fashion show… Night and day, it nagged at me. In reality? Things hadn’t really changed at all, that’s what it told me. I ran over the obstacles in my mind… our shared history, much of it dark and ugly… my limitations… I was still a vampire… still unable to walk in the sun, or breathe, or have a family…

I seemed to be a new man, stuck in the same old predicament… with the same old problems.

It looked like Buffy took it for granted, now, that she and I would be together… try again. And right up until I found out about my curse, I would have thrown my whole being into believing it, too. That night in San Francisco, before all this happened, had opened my eyes to truths I had long shoved into the back of my mind. I needed Buffy… needed her like flowers need rain… loved her with a passion so deep, it seemed to consume me from within, warming the dead cold of my center…

And I missed her. The two silent years we’d been apart, out of contact, by my choice, had been darker than any in my experience, including my time in Hell… Without Buffy, I was truly dead… and her behavior that night proved the same was true, for her.

What do you do when you know something is terribly wrong, but it is the only thing that you live for? How do you justify the unjustifiable? How do you answer the questions that plague you… shake the doubt that haunts you?

I wanted her. More than I had wanted anything, as demon or man, in my considerable life.

But was it right, all of a sudden? What was really changed by my finding out I was a being with a bound soul? Everything. And nothing. Hope and despair crowded around me, fighting for the opportunity to overcome me…

Being bound would not bring Jenny Calendar back… would not heal the wounds the demon inside me had inflicted on Buffy and her friends… would not take back the way I left her, alone, defenseless… lonely and bereft of any desire to go on living…

I laughed at my self-indulgence… Who did I think I was? Could I really believe that I…me, a monster with the blood of hundreds, maybe thousands, on my hands, on my soul… could be so important to a woman as strong and good as Buffy?

Of course I could. I could believe it because I saw it in her eyes.

‘Her blood sings in my veins…’ The thought occurred to me, as it did now and again. I was reminded of the great, tragic loves of literature… Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isoldt… so many others…

There were no happy endings in the stories, not even when the lovers were tied as deep as the soul… The mundane realities of the everyday, the harsh shadows of the past, the spectres of responsibility… they don’t bow down, not even to the strongest demands of love. There are bridges, no matter how hard you may desire it, no matter how hard you try, that simply cannot be crossed.

I thought back over the past few months. My reality had begun to seen lighter, somehow, knowing I could call her… could see her in my dreams… touch her… For the first time in my life, it seemed… I don’t know… softer, around the edges… almost easy. A smile was quick to come to my lips… I spent as much time imagining happy possibilities as brooding over the darkness inside me… it was a state of being I don’t remember ever experiencing, before… I was happy. Almost.

But that in itself frightened me. Being what, and who I was, happiness was almost its own sort of cruel curse…I remember when I was haunted by The First… when I had gone to Giles in desperation, dying, slowly losing my sanity… knowing that he hated me… knowing that I had caused him so much pain…

He had opened the door, and the look of shocked horror on his face was almost a comfort, ironically enough… I was in so much pain, suffering guilt like I’d never felt before, it was like the lash of a well-deserved whip…

He stood, staring at me, fear and fury blighting his kind eyes, for a long moment before he spoke.

"Hello." He said, without enthusiasm.

"Um… I’m sorry to bother you." I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say…

He laughed. Laughed. It was bitter… ironic… hateful. I flinched.

"Sorry." He said, "Coming from you that phrase strikes me as rather funny. 'Sorry to bother me.'"

I had nowhere else to turn. I had to face his hatred… "I need your help."

"And the funny keeps on coming." His quip was hollow, accompanied by an uncharacteristic scowl.

I swallowed hard, kept on… determined to find out… "I know I have no right to ask for it. But there’s no one else."

I saw something… compassion, maybe? Begin to warm his eyes… just barely. He must have been thinking of Buffy…

"Alright."

He turned and walked away, tossing the dishtowel he was holding on the kitchen counter, and disappearing down the hall. I stood there, embarrassed… ashamed… forbidden to enter. He was punishing me… I deserved it. I thought of Jenny… she was haunting me… literally… and the irony of the fact that I was here to ask her lover why… it didn’t escape my notice, even for a moment.

"I… I can’t come in unless you invite me." I mumbled.

He returned, then, training a crossbow on me. "I’m aware of that." He said, walking back to stand before me at the door. One flick of his finger, and I had no doubt the bolt would be loosed straight into my chest. I waited for it, almost welcomed it…

"Come in." He said.

I hesitantly crossed the threshold, feeling the tension of the magick that blocked me dissipate, only to be replaced by another tension… a far more difficult one to pass… one edged with pain, with fear… in the condition I was in, it made it almost impossible to move… but I did. His aim didn’t waiver as I moved… he followed me, the point of the crossbow in perfect time with his line of vision… a master of weapons, Giles… weapons both literal and metaphorical…

I began to try to explain…"I've been seeing… I've... I've had dreams lately about the past. It's... It's like I'm living it again. It's…it's so vivid, I... I need to know." I felt the desperation wash over me once again. I was pleading…"I need to know why I'm here."

"Here. Back on Earth." Giles seemed clearer about this than even I was… Of course, it was his life’s work to be clear… to understand… to know…

"I should be in the Demon Dimension, suffering an eternity of torture." I said.

"I don’t feel particularly inclined to argue with that." He said honestly. Touché.

"But I’m not. I was freed, and I don’t understand why."

"Knowing why you were back would give you peace of mind?"

Would it? "It might." I said.

It was then when I saw her. Giles leaned over, finally feeling safe enough to put down his weapon, and she was standing there, over his shoulder. Jenny. I gaped at her.

"You think that’s something you ought to have?" He asked, "Because sir, to be blunt, the last time you became complacent about your existence turned out rather badly."

I had run, then… run from his house, from the apparitions… But I remembered every moment of it… remembered every word, every gesture that came from him… the first time we had interacted since my return from Hell… since I had tortured him… since I had killed his true love…

‘Do you think peace of mind is something you ought to have?’ I asked his question, again, to myself. Complacency had been the catalyst for horror beyond the most brutal nightmares of the people I visited it on…

Did I deserve peace of mind? Did I deserve these answers? Even now, when years had passed, I wasn’t sure. Who was I? Was I the creature who lived inside me?

It’s as if I was being haunted again… always the voices, always there, in the back of my mind, taunting me… telling me that my love for Buffy is a joke… that a woman like her could never love a monster like me… no matter what the state of my soul. No matter what forgiveness The PowersThat Be seemed to grant me. My deeds would never be undone.

I struggled like I’d never struggled before. I had strength, now, strength lent to me by my certainty that Buffy’s love must mean something… that the binding of my soul must be a sign of some measure of forgiveness… but still my demons haunted me… I no longer knew who I was, on any level. Was I still the monster that killed so many hundreds of innocent people? Who measured out torture, blood and death like ice cream? Who smiled at the screaming, who laughed at the pleas for mercy? Or was I the gentle man, the one who held Buffy while she cried… who took in the demon Eyghon to save Jenny Calendar… who offered comfort to any and all who might ask it of me? Was I the monster who twisted Jenny’s neck until it snapped like a twig? Or was I the lover reflected in Buffy’s eyes?

I simply didn’t know. And it drove me into a dark pit of despair like nothing I’d ever experienced. To know the possibility of forgiveness… to have the certainty of being unforgivable… the combination of the two was twisting me into knots, crippling me… blinding me.

I had become complacent, once again, about my state of being. And this… this confusion, it was certainly a sign of the other shoe about to drop. A warning that I hadn’t had the last time… Perhaps this was all a cruel trick… perhaps the Curse was not gone at all, but had only transformed into something deeper…

I knew. I knew with every ounce of pain, every flicker of hope, of joy, inside me, that I had to find the answers to my own questions before I could return to her again. I must have a sense of self before I could give that Self to her.

But I had no control, it seemed, over my journeys to the Dreaming. Each time I fell asleep she was there, waiting for me, smiling… And for those moments we spent in the World Between the Worlds, I forgot my confusion, forgot my uncertainty, forgot my pain… they were the most peaceful moments I could ever remember. They made my quest seem so far away…

Until, one night…

We were sitting on the edge of her bed… it always seemed to be her home we met in, in the Netherworld… or rather, her room as it had been when we fell in love… the little girl’s room, filled with photos and memories, and the big brass bed we always sat on. I was reading to her. Reading from the volume of poetry I had given her for her 18th birthday… the one she had lost when she was attacked by the Council’s monster…

She had begged me to read it to her. To read it all to her… But I hardly had to read it. I knew almost every line by heart…

"Thou comest ! all is said without a word.
I sit beneath thy looks, as children do
In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through
Their happy eyelids from an unaverred
Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred
In that last doubt ! and yet I cannot rue
The sin most, but the occasion--that we two
Should for a moment stand unministered
By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close,
Thou dovelike help ! and, when my fears would rise,
With thy broad heart serenely interpose:
Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies
These thoughts which tremble when bereft of those,
Like callow birds left desert to the skies."

She sighed, her eyes still closed as they always were, when she listened to me read… I felt the usual warm smile overtake me, and I leaned forward, slowly, to kiss her sweet lips…

"That’s so beautiful…" she whispered.

"So are you…" I whispered back.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The room wavered, the air changed, and suddenly, she was standing there again. A repeat of a repeat of a horror…

Jenny Calendar. I froze. Gasped. She was grinning at me… leering in a way that only a demon can…

Buffy felt my hesitation, realized the ending of the kiss never begun. She looked up at me.

"Angel? Angel, what’s wrong?" She said, fear quickly filling her soft green eyes. I still couldn’t move… still sat immobile, watching the apparition float toward us, standing over Buffy’s shoulder, nearly nose to nose with me… She said nothing, only looked Buffy up and down like she was examining a particularly tasty meal, al a cart, in a restaurant. I felt certain that if she had been able, she would have drooled…

"Gods…" I said, moving away from Buffy, uncertain what to do, but certain I had to get this thing away from her.

Buffy was terrified. She jumped from the bed and looked behind her, to where I stared.

"Angel…"

I woke. Alone, in the dark of my own room. No ghosts… but I heard eerie laughter… an inhuman chuckle.

It was starting again. The phone beside my bed began to ring. I didn’t answer it, but lay there, staring at the shadows, listening to the laughter…

Next Part

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