DISCLAIMER: I don't own Angel (sigh.) God (aka Joss) does.
RATING: G
CONTENT: Well... technically, swear words, although used in their proper contexts instead of as curses.
SPOILERS: 'Becoming'. Although you wouldn't understand unless you watched said show anyway. To understand this, you may want to have first read the one that comes before this, "The Brotherhood".
SUMMARY: The end of the world. Quite an anticlimax, after all the show set up for it. It's my own special flair; no-one else can write a story about the Apocolypse... and then write a sequel!
Last Man Out
by Catoninetails
From his vantage on the hilltop, Angel looked down upon the shattered remains of Sunnydale. Used to be, the town was so alive, warm and bustling with frenzied activity. Full of demons, vampires and other storybook horrors, yes, but at least it was alive. Now it was a sterile, frozen wasteland, the very buildings crumbling into ruins, any trace of life long having fled to seek more hospitable climes, if they existed. It was the same for thousands of miles around in all directions. Sometimes it seemed to him that the only thing left alive in the world was himself, and that sensation was not too far off from the actual truth.
Once upon a time, over three hundred years ago, Angel had been near despair, sometimes feeling that he couldn't live without Buffy, sometimes simply giving in to the hopelessness of the situation. His children, his companions, had been his strength then, and the fate of the world had rested on their shoulders, after all. It had taken time, a long time, before he had finally healed. It was hard to say whose twisted sense of humor had granted him reconciliation right before the world as he knew and loved it was destroyed, and whether he had been glad or sorry he had been offered the chance to make his peace.
They had tried for so long, so hard. One by one, Angel's demonic companions had lost hope and given in to the ceaseless disasters which wracked the planet. Natural winter, nuclear winter, supernatural winter, all three at once, what difference did it make? They all killed. The demons of the Hellmouth were only strengthened by the widespread collapse of civilization. Spike, Drusilla, and himself had tried anyway, to keep the Hellmouth closed and forestall Doomsday for as long as possible. But first the mad princess, then Spike, had died. Angel had continued on by himself, fighting every day and expecting to die, until it came to him... there was nothing left to protect. He had failed.
Angel sighed. Never, in his wildest nightmares, had he imagined, as an eighteen-year-old Irish boy, that he would see the end of the world, but it looked like that was going to be the way of things.
Angel glanced at the sky. The stars along the eastern edge of the horizon were fading, swallowed up by the pre-dawn gray. It was not a hard thing he was doing, sitting here on the naked hilltop waiting for his death. He had accepted a long time ago that the past was not worth dying for... but the present and the future weren't worth living for. He was so tired.
Bone-tired, soul-tired. Men were not made to live forever. Perhaps Spike, with his dying words, had been right
I'm sorry, mate. Sorry I have to leave you... to do this... alone...
and perhaps the constant solitude was driving him mad; more likely, though, Angel had simply lived far too long. Even the depths of Hell, which he knew awaited him after his long and colorful past, seemed preferable to living one more day in this frost-choked emptiness, one more day alone. Even his fear was worn-out and stale.
Angel drew his knees up to his body and wrapped his arms around them. He was lying to himself; he was afraid. He was afraid of what would happen when his immortal existance was terminated; he was afraid of what he might find in the afterlife; he was afraid of dying. He had fought his lonliness, his loss, his sorrow, for almost half a millenium, and this was the end. There was nothing more to fight for. The world was dead, the Hellmouth was sealed, not that there was anything to protect from it. When he died, the binding spell they had used to close the gateway would terminate, and the demons of Hell would sweep across the planet in full force at last. Very well. He wished them all joy of this dead world. No man or demon would remain to gaze upon Armegeddon; Angel was the last man out.
So this is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper... there was something not quite right about that half-remembered quote, but Angel couldn't recall it and soon gave up trying.
Eternity ended. Joy, hope, and pleasure had passed away from him hundreds of years ago; all that remained to the vampire was some forlorn wish for peace. Peace which he knew, with a soul-deep despair he did not have the energy or the will to fight, which would be denied to him. The sun would rise, and Angel would die.
Nothing else mattered.
The sky lightened further. As Angel waited, memories he had thought he had buried centuries ago began to trickle back. It was said that your life flashed before your eyes in your last moment of life; if so, Angel had several lifetimes to review and had to get a head start. His perspective on his own unpardonable acts, so very distant now, had changed; crimes against the world meant so much less to one who had seen what crimes the world commited against itself.
No, it was not memories of his time as Angelus that brought Angel so much pain; not any more. Demons, even his own, held no more fear for him. It was memories of the brief years of happiness he had spent at the side of a certain spunky young Slayer that hurt him so much. There was joy accompanying the images too, but it seemed a distant thing, vague, so long lost in time that he could barely identify the emotion. All he could feel was the loss, the sharp bite of grief that he had gotten over centuries ago, or so he thought.
He nearly laughed aloud. He hadn't moved on. He had never gotten over her. But he had pretended, burying all his emotions down where the pain couldn't touch him; fighting the demons of Earth as he could not fight them inside himself. He had lied to himself, had been lying for hundreds of years now. To what gain? He looked around in bleak despair at the shattered, dead world which had once been his home. General despair added onto personal despair. It was time to stop lying. Time to stop pretending he could make a difference. Time to let go. To let go of his past, his world, his life--
This was familiar. Oh yes. Long, long ago--how long? It bothered him that he couldn't remember--he had stood here before... so soon out of Hell for the first time, driven to the brink of insanity by a thing that Giles had called the First Evil, he had waited for day... just as he was waiting now. There had been a girl, then, one who pleaded with him not to give himself to the dawn, and Somebody Up There had seconded her request. It hadn't been his time, not yet.
But the stars were shining brighter than ever, overhead and in the west, and the sky was sharp, dead, and clear, without a hint of protecting cloud cover. Yes. This was the right thing to do. No salvation for him now -- he had failed.
The light was brighter, now, bright enough to nearly destroy his vision, which had been seeing by starlight for so many years now. But he could still see, down among the ruins, where the first ray of sunlight struck the crumbling pile of brick that had once upon a time been a high school. Panic engulfed him, as his instincts tried to react to the death that was swift enroaching upon him. A more conscious fear, one Angel had almost buried under his other, older emotions, almost overwhelmed him, almost sent him scrambling for cover one more time. Equally torn between grief and fear, Angel did not move.
He could almost feel a gathering of energy, a magical tenseness in the air as the spell to bind the Hellmouth weakened in anticipation of his coming demise. He paid it no mind. Blinded now, sensitive skin already beginning to burn, Angel's sight was fixed upon the brightening horizon.
"Perhaps," he whispered, the first words he'd spoken in over a decade, "perhaps we shall be together at last, my love..." His voice cracked and ran to silence. He doubted it. But there was no room for doubt in his determination, his resolve.Let Hell take him. His time was long past gone. The ray of light spread over the ruined town below and crept towards the ancient graveyard. Seconds to go...
Time had run out. Time to die.
Dawn; the uncaring sun shed its fierce light upon a dead world.
Come with me where chains will never bind you.
All your grief, at last--at last--behind you.
Lord in Heaven, look down on him with mercy...
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Bang! (feedback to you-know-who-@yahoo.com)
I'm the Last Man Out... and out
The Brotherhood ][ Last Man Out ][ Blacklight
Behind the Scenes ][ What's Mine Is Yours ][ 3 Thru The Merry-O
Swing Set ][ The Healer ][ Black & White
The Meek Shall Inherit ][ Rosemary For Remembrance
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