Pairing - A/S A/OC(Gabriel)

Disclaimer - only the story and the OCs are mine - I worship the God that is Joss who created and owns the characters we all love so much - so no offence meant!

Warning - Angst, Slash

Quick recap... Spike/William pretty much raped Angelus over a century ago. Angel and Spike managed to work past this and entered a relationship, Angel as Spike's Claim. Life was good until the Scoobies showed up in LA, Angel began having visions and an old lover named Gabriel decided he wanted his Angel back. Angel ran... A Broken Hallelujah & Gabriel...

If you enjoy then please review...

Mourning

Los Angeles. You see it at night and it shines. Like a beacon. People are drawn to it. He couldn't understand that really. For him the lights of LA no longer shined that brightly. The world had taken on a dull edge. Dull edges were always more painful, they meant that the cut was no longer clean; it was jagged and split and uneven. Much like the scars he now bore. Scars which were very much self-inflicted. They say that time heals all wounds but they are very wrong. All time does is allow for the scabs to develop. No matter how much time passes, if the blade passes deep enough, then there is always a scar. Pink and ugly and raw against his pure alabaster skin. Time just allows for the holes to be filled in, but it can never undo the damage.

Four months. It had been four months and the ring and letter were still on the coffee table where He had left them. He hadn't dared move them. Everyone knew not to touch the relics, those sacred items that meant more than anything else in this huge unforgiving world. The apartment, this lofty eerie from which He used to watch his small world revolve, is now nothing more than a dead man's crypt. It's a shrine, a mausoleum, a tomb. Its purpose has changed. No longer is it home, not that it ever really was, but it is nothing like that anymore. Its sole inhabitant does nothing more than rest his head here. But it is not a home. A home is full of love and life. This place is home only to death and grief. It is a tomb, once which saints would envy – if only for its guardian.

His clothes still took up the wardrobe and dresser space but he didn't care... they were all he had left. All he had left... bits of cloth, a piece of paper and a band of silver... it wasn't enough. It wasn't anywhere near enough. His dark haired lover was gone and he had nothing tangible to hold on to anymore. The apartment no longer smelled of Him. It now reeked of cheap whisky and stale cigarettes and that glorious scent of honey and nutmeg had been washed away by time. Wesley's scent now clung to the huge CEO office - although he had had Angel's desk and chair replaced with his own, unwilling or unable to take Angel's position behind it. The cars, the Viper, had all been destroyed in a fortnight of drunken racing round the city to find Him. It had taken a crying slip of a girl hitting him with all of her grieving fury to make him realise that he wasn't the only one that was hurting. They all were.

Everyday he looked into the faces of people, his friends he guessed, and saw that something was missing from their lives. There was a certain spark that no longer shined. A certain... no there were no words that would define the magnitude of grief that they felt over what they missed from their lives. Each had taken loss in their stride before, but this was very different. This was a loss that could have been avoided but for their own actions. His especially. He saw it everyday; each of them had a glint in their eyes that held blame towards him. Whenever they had to work on a case, he could hear the unsaid accusation that Angel should be here. When it was decided that he would take point he felt the stares that wished he were Angel; that said he wasn't Angel, he never would be Angel and it was his fault that Angel was missing.

Wesley watched impassively as the lift doors slid silently open. He hated having to come up into this apartment. It had been bad enough when Angel had lived there, a fortressed cage for him to pass his nights in, but now it was foreboding. When they had arrived at the steel and glass bastion of Wolfram and Hart they had all agreed that the White Room was the one place that they would hate to be locked in over the weekend. He remembered that night fondly. There had been whiskey and tears and recriminations before bedtime but there had been laughter. Loud and raucous, it had echoed through the uninhabited building like a song. That echo had long since faded. Everything had. It was as if they were stuck in the depths of winter with no chance of every feeling the sun on their faces again. They lacked hope. This room, this apartment was the manifestation of that lack. No matter how bright the Californian sun shone, it didn't manage to pierce the darkness of this place. Spike's mood, Angel's loss, it all appeared in the very air of the penthouse and made it thick and heavy and stale with pain. It was the worst room in the world.

For a few moments he stood there, neither in nor out of the space and he just watched the blonde vampire as he sat staring out on the LA night. He knew what Spike was doing, he was trying to sense Angel. For a couple of weeks after Angel's disappearance, Spike had led the hunt for Angel, his blood link telling him that Angel was still within their range. The link had abruptly failed though and Spike had, like everyone else, been forced to sit back and wait for the Special Ops teams to do their work. Everyday progress reports had landed on his desk, five teams each moving in an ever increasing circle outwards, and none of them finding neither hide nor hair to indicate that the dark vampire had passed that way. They had tagged his bank accounts and credit cards and hoped that he would become desperate enough to use them – so far he hadn't. That worried Wesley more than the plain fact that Angel was missing. Angel was either hunting or, more worryingly, he wasn't eating. If he was no longer feeding, then after four months, nearly five, he must be close to starvation point. Through his studies as a Watcher he had read about how it only takes a healthy vampire a little over a month to appear famished and be severely weakened. But if Angel hadn't been feeding for nearly five months, Wesley dreaded to think what state he was now in. He would be starving, alone and probably very scared. And if the visions were still coming, then his mental state, not to mention his physical from the fights, would be at risk as well.

He had to tamp down on the anger that he felt towards the blonde demon. He, of all of them knew the real situation. He of all of them knew what Spike felt for Angel and what Angel felt for Spike. Wesley sighed. He had been against the relationship from the start and it had nothing to do with the fact that they were both male. No, it had everything to do with the fact that he didn't trust Spike not to hurt Angel. He still remembered the way they had sat in this room and Angel had stammered and stuttered trying to tell them that he and Spike were involved when Spike had just come out and said it. He had spent that entire evening sneaking glances at them, his worry growing as he saw the way Angel leaned into Spike. His first reaction to the news had been the most obvious – concern for Angel's soul, but as the evening had worn on he had grown more worried about Angel in Spike's care. If there was one thing true about Angel is was that he loved with his entire heart. Once someone had made it in there, into the most protected of all citadels, then they never escaped. Not even if they sent Angel to hell. Wesley could only dread to think what Spike could do with that power over Angel. His fears had only grown with watching Lorne. Those red eyes had tracked the blonde vampire non stop that first week, an unspoken threat hiding in those fiery orbs. Of course Lorne knew them all better than anyone else could hope to, who knew what he had been privy too when looking into Angel's head. But there was one thing that he knew; he knew that Lorne had not seen anything good. He knew that Lorne had seen pain, Angel's pain and he knew that Spike was a contributing factor. Now he knew the truth. Spike had always been the one with the ability to break Angel. He had almost broken him once, so long ago, and a hundred years later he had decided to finish the job.

But if Wesley was truthful, if he was brutally honest, it wasn't Spike that he was cross at. He wasn't cross at Spike for breaking Angel, or at Angel for allowing himself to be broken. He was cross at himself. He knew that if he had been any real friend, any true Watcher protecting their charge, he never would have allowed things to get so far. He could have said something to Spike so much earlier, rather than waiting for the dramatic showdown with the Scoobies. No, he was furious with himself for not sticking to his early judgements and telling Spike to stay away. He had cornered Spike with that precise intention the Tuesday after they had all been told the joyous news but he had allowed his resolve to be swayed by flowery prose spewed by a failed poet.

He glanced at Angel's office. His beautiful dark haired lover was sat, eyes focused on a piece of paper, pen poised and a small smile on his luscious lips. Spike knew that he had put that smile there and he allowed his own smile to form as he tried to work out what it was that Angel was recalling. Was it a lazy, unhurried and inelegant kiss? Was it long hours of loving in the hazy sunlight that the blinds didn't block? Was it touching in the warm bath waters, the scent of lavender dancing in the steam? Was it all of it, all mixed into one hazy dream?

"I want to talk to you."

Wesley's voice gave no room for argument. Spike had to admit he was a little nervous around this Watcher, he had thought Rupert to be a dangerous man hiding behind layers of tweed and tea, but he had had nothing on Wesley's darkness. Two sets of blue eyes met and locked and enmity flared. Both were joined by one purpose and love and despite that Spike was under no illusion that Wesley wouldn't hesitate to stake him in a heartbeat. He blinked and turned back to Angel's office. He was starting out of the window now, just like he did every evening, watching the sun set over his city. Spike felt Wesley's icy gaze follow his.

"Not here."

They had left the office on foot and walked in a frosty silence for almost twenty minutes until Spike opened the door to a bar that he had found and fallen in love with. It was a real English pub, not a novelty one, but one set up by a couple of ex-pats that had been in the city for a few years and missed the simple pleasures of home. They served real English ales, using real pumps – not the waste of space vortex taps that had the beer fizzing too much. They kept away from the weak yellow largers and served the rich deep brown and creamy drinks that Spike had missed so much. The scent of traditional British grub flowed into the room, mixing with the spilt ale and faint smell of wood and the smoke from the fire in the grate making him feel as though he was at home once more. If he had cared he would have seen the delight on Wesley's face at finding this slice of home so far away, but he didn't, he simply went to order and then took his pint and sat at a corner table.

They talked for well over an hour as Spike tried to convince his fellow Englishman that he did love Angel. When that had failed he had tried to tell Percy to mind his own business, even going so far as to accuse him of jealousy at one point. In the end though, he had poured his heart out to Wesley, telling him the entire truth of how he felt.

"Percy, I now have a chance… Listen mate, let me put it this way, William was a wanker. He was weak and pathetic and would have died of either old age, alone in his bed in the house he had grown up in, or he would have been killed by a thug when he tried to talk him out of takin' a woman's purse. Either way – he was a ponce, a flowery mummy's boy who I wouldn't have even bothered to bite, let alone turn. But I will say this for the muppet – he loved with all of his heart. He loved his mum and he loved that bitch Cecily and they were his world. For a bloody century I have had all of that inside of me and I wanted someone who could handle that kind of love – cos it isn't pretty. It's full on obsessive and dark and painful. But I don't think that I have to tell you that love is like that.

"Tried to love Dru like that but she was insane – went off with a Chaos demon. She didn't want love, no matter if it came with chains and needle nose pliers. She wanted what Angelus gave her – she wanted that inhuman darkness, love was too human for her. Don't think she ever said she loved me… can't recall one time she said 'I love my Spike', not once. Then there was Buffy… she couldn't handle the darkness… funny that seein as how she was bein consumed by it. She thought that love was all flowers and candy hearts. Never realised that it was pain and blood and tears and passion as well as the soft stuff… But Angel… Angel wants it. He craves it cos he loves like that too. He wants someone who wants nothing from him but love.

I don't need a Champion, or a protector or even a Sire… I don't want it. I know what the world is like, lived and died in it. I've seen the worst of the worst and the best of all that is good and bright. Angel is one of them, one of the last heroes, one of the best of them. All I want, all I need is Angel. His heart, his body, his mind, his torn up, broken down soul. I wanna hold them and keep 'em safe from the world. Wanna take him from the world cos it doesn't deserve him.

That's it, that's all I have. I can't give him anything, all I can do is love him, hold him when he cries, be there when he needs to lash out and throw down, and kiss him when his soul bleeds. I'm Love's Bitch Wesley, and I am well and truly whipped this time."

Wesley didn't know whether it was the room, the alcohol, the frighteningly intense azure gaze or whether it was simply that that was the most he had ever heard Spike say and it had come from the heart. Spike had danced between his affected cockney to a soft gentle voice, but no matter how he had spoken he had meant those words. They had been an outpouring he couldn't take back; they had flitted from thought to thought in a rambling stream but at the end… at the end Wesley had been convinced that Spike did truly love Angel. He saw it whenever he said that name; a small smile, no more than the upturning of the corners of his mouth, and a little sparkle in his eyes. There had been no talk of promises, no threats of stringing Wesley up by his knackers if he tried to stop this, just the purity of speech.

Love.

He had seen it again the morning that Wesley felt his heart break for the first time. He had come up to the penthouse to tell Spike to leave and he had found him sat on the sofa staring at a piece of paper, twirling something through his fingers that sent little rays of light spinning off into the room. There was a blank glaze over Spike's eyes and for a horrible few minutes he thought Angel was dead. He had shook Spike, yelled at him, tried to break his catatonia but in the end Spike had slumped down into the cushions as Wesley let him go in favour of the note. It had been the bravest thing that he had ever had to do and when he had finished, he could do no more that pull the vampire to him and cry into his shoulder. He had felt the tears that began to seep through his shirt, hot and salty as Spike finally broke. He trembled and shook and scream and Wes held him as he had done Angel.

Tears sealed their new bond, the two that loved Angel the most, and the two that would miss him the most. Wes had lost a brother, friend, ally and boss. Spike had lost a Sire, Claim, soul mate and brother in arms. Both were hurt. Both were mourning. Both were lost. But despite that brotherhood they now had as the two who knew everything of what had happened, as Spike had refused to allow anyone else near the note, or even in the penthouse, Wes was still angry. More importantly he felt betrayed. Yet every time he saw Spike when the vampire had let his guard down, the unrestrained misery had his traitorous heart flying to the vampire. He knew that the only thing that stopped Spike walking into the sun was the promise Angel would come back when he had sorted himself out. One night after a lot of whiskey Spike had told him that he wouldn't hold it against Angel if he never came back, but that he was proud Angel was doing this. He knew that had they carried on, eventually Angel would have hated him and Spike would have hated himself and their bond would have destroyed them both. Wes had been shocked at the maturity of the vampire, and that had been the seal on his forgiveness… had Spike not seen this he knew that he would never have been willing for the vampire to stay. He would have rang Italy and had Buffy come and collect him, like she wanted to when he had to field the calls that Spike refused to take.

Only Wes and Fred got near the vampire now. Of the LA group they were the only ones who were willing to check on him, even Harmony felt betrayed and Lorne's limitless good nature was not moving past the hurt he had seen on Angel's face that last night. Only they checked on him day after day, invited him out, made him fight with them. Although they never had to make him do that – he wanted to keep them safe for Angel. It was the last real thing he had of Angel in the world, and no matter how many times Gunn told him to take a mid day stroll, he was always there when they needed him. Now it was his turn to betray Spike. He hadn't done anything… other than not fought hard enough to stop this outcome. He knew that what the folder he held would probably destroy the vampire all the more. In fact, he suspected that he would be lucky to get out of their alive. It wouldn't matter that he had contacted Willow and Faith and had a new search on hand; he had still failed Spike because he had failed Angel.

He coughed. Spike didn't acknowledge him; he was staring at the worn paper… like he did every night he wasn't hunting with them. Wes knew that Spike sat there until dawn broke the night sky, waiting and hoping that the new day would bring Angel home to him… or if not Angel then at least news of him.

"Spike?"

He waited for a response, but none came. Spike was lost for the moment. Wes moved into the room and went over to where Spike was sitting. He could now see what had Spike so enthralled. It was the sketch book Angel had shown him… it was Gabriel's face.

"Spike?"

There was a long period of silence until Spike broke it. His voice was gravely and almost broken, but it resonated with the anguish of a thousand broken hearts.

"Do you think that he'll look after him?"

"We don't know that he is with Gabriel Spike."

"No. We don't know anything do we?" The contempt was back, thick and heavy. It fuelled Wesley's anger once more.

"No Spike, we don't. Angel does not want to be found – he made that clear in that note you clutch like a talisman. He has vanished and we all know why. So stop throwing tantrums! If Angel doesn't want to be found then…" He trailed off as he caught onto Spike's game. He wanted someone to yell at him, to tell him it was all his fault, to fight him… maybe even stake him. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose – it had been a long day. "He will come back Spike, but not until he is ready. He needs to heal. You need him to heal – otherwise you might never have a chance to regain what you lost. Angel loves you, don't forget that. Don't forget that when Angel loves, nothing ever leaves his heart… and that not many are lucky enough to get in there."

He paused to let the validity of his words sink in. When Spike nodded slowly, he braved the Gabriel part of the question.

"But… if he is with Gabriel…" He saw the flash of gold in the dark. "If he is with Gabriel, then at least he is safe. You may not like the idea of them together, but I would rather Angel be under the protection of one hell of a powerful vampire than wandering the streets alone! Gabriel may be a vampire but he will not harm Angel… you know that as well as I do."

Spike had nothing to say to that. Wesley was right, he hadn't even met the vampire but he had felt the love that he had for Angel through a growl and a door. If he had to lose Angel, at least it was someone who would cherish and protect him. He knew Wesley well enough to know that if he would sanction Gabriel, then the vampire had to love Angel very much. Wes guarded Angel more fiercely than Cerberus… only the worthy could pass him. He merely nodded.

"Want a drink?"

"No… I can't stay… umm… I brought this."

He placed the folder on to the table and backed up.

"Why do I think that that won't tell me I've won the lottery?"

"I'm sorry Spike… I couldn't…"

"Get out."

"Now, hold on…"

"Out Watcher."

Wesley knew that voice. Low and silky and sharper than a scalpel. Spike was near to snapping point and Wes knew not to push it. Unlike Angel, Spike didn't necessarily draw the line at a scathing comment.

"Well I just leave it here then. Goodnight." He paused; he really didn't want to leave it like this. "I'm sorry… I miss him too."

Wes left the penthouse, his head hung low. The folder that he brought up lay untouched for a few moments. Spike filled up his tumbler, holding it for a minute before downing the contents and then hurling the glass at the wall above the wet bar. The shattering of glass fragmented the stillness and quiet of the apartment and a rain of tinkling crystal echoed before everything went quiet. He picked the file up and read the main bullet points of the official Wolfram and Hart memo.

1) Meeting of the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart...

A low growl began in his throat at this.

2) Wesley Wyndham-Price is to take the full position of CEO of the LA branch of...

The rumble from his chest danced across the LA night followed soon after by the flash of lightning.

3) The search for Angel is unsuccessful. Time and resources... waste of man power... TERMINATED.

Spike's scream of agony at this news flooded out on to the wind and danced through the air. Nature replied to his cry...

The rain began to fall.