Summary: When Angel sees Cordy and Connor making love something changes.
Timeline: Set after "Apocalypse, Nowish". Then kinda AU.
Disclaimer: They all don't belong to me. weepBut, oh, well, I'll just borrow them and try do give them back. ;-))
This isn't my first story, but please, tell me, what you think (- R&R). I have so many ideas in my head how I could go on, but I won't if no one likes this story.
A/N: This story was supposed to be a multi chapter fic, but has been ABANDONED because I lost interest in the Angel/Buffy universe. Sorry. However, I think this chapter can stand alone like it is now without any problems, so I'll just leave it like this.
He froze. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. Everything froze. It was as if the world was standing still, only the scene in front of him moved. He watched. He couldn't look away, even though it felt like it ripped him apart. Piece by piece. But he couldn't turn away. It was like in a movie, where your favourite actor gets hurt or tortured you want to press stop, but you don't. You watch on and can't stop.
He wanted to turn around, but couldn't. He could see their every move. He saw him touching her, kissing her, loving her. Or better: Making love with her. His imagination even let him hear the sounds: Frantic breathing, moaning, whispers.
But then, while he still watched them, the searing pain lessened. He didn't notice at first, but suddenly he did. And he was afraid. This should hurt. Seeing them should hurt. He loved her, he cared for her. So if she slept with another man – let alone his son – it should hurt like hell. Like it had until some moments ago.
Moments? What's a moment? Is it a second? A minute? The time you need to breathe one time? One heartbeat? He didn't know. And suddenly he realised, what he was thinking about. Here he stood, on the roof of some building watching her making love with his son, and philosophized about a concept like that. How could he think about something as negligible as that?
But, as he realised, he didn't care. He didn't care if his Cordelia slept with his son, he didn't even care about the world ending in a rain of fire. He just didn't care.
He didn't care? No, he didn't. He only felt…empty. Yes, cold, empty, spent.
But, that couldn't be. He'd always cared. The only time he didn't care, was without a soul. But he did have his soul. He hadn't have a moment of true happiness, so he couldn't have lost his soul. He just felt too tired to care. Too…he didn't know. He didn't care.
He turned around and left. His feet were walking him somewhere. But where did he go? He didn't care. But he should, he suddenly realised. He should care where he went.
And with that the world snapped back into focus. He found himself in a dark street with high houses on each side. Rubbish was laying all around and it stank. No one was in sight. Something rattled behind him. He turned around to see what it was. Three kids, youths or whatever you wanna call them stood there with baseball bats and thin iron pipes in their hands. They approached him and as he turned around to walk away to evade them he realized, he was surrounded by ten or fifteen youths.
One of them asked him: "What'cha doin' 'ere? This is our street."
He turned around to face the speaker, who seemed to be the leader of this gang. "I'm just passing by." he answered, but only got a sarcastic: "Yeah, sure you are."
He looked down on himself and realized that his clothes were torn and dirty as was his skin. All in all he looked like one of them, only older. Now he knew what they must have been thinking: They probably thought he was from another gang. To explain the situation he said: "Hey, I'm not who you think I am. I really just wanna pass by. I don't want any fights. I've lost my way and am only trying to get home."
The leader of the gang looked at him, then grinned and approached him. Then the others approached him as well. Some of them grinned, stretched their arms and swung their weapons in anticipation to the fight. From the way they moved, Angel could tell they thought they'd win the fight. Then they attacked. He tried to fend them off without hurting them too badly, but they were too many.
Why shouldn't he hurt them? Because…because…Yeah, why? That was a good question. Oh, right, they were humans. And he didn't hurt or kill humans. But why? He was a vampire for gods sake! Vampires killed humans. So why shouldn't he? Oh, yeah, he had a soul. But what does that mean? A soul? A soul didn't make him any less a vampire. He still had the strengths and weaknesses of a vampire. And also the urges. He wanted to drink blood and to maim and kill as every other vampire, but he also had a conscience. That meant he felt bad after killing or hurting someone, not more and not less.
Buffy used to think that he and Angelus were two totally different people, who just happened to share one body. She could clearly differ between Angel and Angelus. Angel was the soul and Angelus was the demon. For someone else it was easy to say: The version that kills is Angelus and the version that is kind and nice is Angel. But there wasn't that much a difference between these two. They were both vampires. They both drank blood, one of them killed to get it and the other one bought it. They both had the urges to kill just for fun. They both liked to inflict pain. But one of them had a soul. And because of that soul, which made him regret the bad things he'd done, he didn't kill just for fun or to get the blood he needed, inflict pain upon others and also didn't follow the many other urges a vampire had. That was the only difference. Actually they were the same person. One time with a soul the other time without a soul. It was like walking bare-footed or shod. You aren't another person, only because you don't wear shoes.
But at the moment he just didn't care. He was a vampire. Vampires killed humans. And more than ever when they were attacked by humans. And he was attacked by humans.
So he defended himself like any vampire would do. He didn't care if these kids were hurt or worse.
He showed his true face and used the moment of surprise of these kids upon seeing it and attacked. He kicked and punched and beat. He let out all the anger and just followed his urges. He started to play with his prey. He let them think they had the upper hand until the moment was right and then he stroke. One after the other went down. A few were dead others barely living. The kids had long realized that they didn't beat him up, but that he beat them up. So the first ones tried to escape. But they didn't get far.
After a while, when no one attacked him, he looked around. None of the kids was standing anymore. Their bodies were all lying on the ground. And he was standing in the middle of the street surrounded by them. For a moment he considered to kill the few, who were still alive, but then thought it would be no fun. They were already weak and it would be more fun to let them die slowly.
He waded through all the kids and watched them die. At least the ones, who hadn't already died. Suddenly he realized that the leader of the gang was missing. He wasn't lying anywhere.
But he couldn't let this one escape! He was the one, who was responsible for this mess and therefore should be punished. On the other hand he was the one, who he had to thank for this. But it would be fun to kill the leader. As the leader he should be the toughest one of them.
So he looked around, sniffed the air, and then breathed through his mouth to taste the air. Yes, definitely, he could smell the guy. He turned into the direction the smell came from and started to stalk his prey. Soundlessly, he jogged down the street. On the first crossroad he stopped and sniffed the air again. Now the smell came from the right. So he turned to the right and climbed to the top of the first building. Now using the roofs and jumping over alleys and streets, he continued to go after the kid.
Finally he saw him. The youth had stopped to recover his breath and looked around frantically. But he didn't look up which was a fault. But if he had, it wouldn't have helped him very much anyway.
Just as he wanted to run off, Angel dropped down and landed three feet in front of his prey. The boy was scared to death and stumbled backward, fell and then crawled backward until he reached the wall.
Angel approached him and took in a deep breath to savor the smell of fear, of panic. He listened to the sound of the rapidly beating heart of the kid. This all was so…familiar. But the memories were so old, too old, he realized. Because of his stupid soul he hadn't done this for over one hundred years.
Stupid soul? Nah, it wasn't that bad. The soul made him able to fall in love, to really fall in love. Soulless vampires could love in a way. They could be loyal, and have a partner to kill and have sex with. They could love like you love your friends. But they couldn't love. They couldn't love someone so much that they would give everything just to make this someone smile, that they would hurt, when they weren't together with him/her, that they would want to die, when their love slept with someone else. Like Cordelia had done.
Shit.
There it was again, this name, these…thoughts. No, it was nothing more than thoughts. No pain. No rage.
Then a new thought occurred to him: He didn't want to die, because she had slept with Connor. But he should. Or didn't he love her? He thought he had loved her. But at the moment he just didn't care.
His mind snapped back to reality. He was standing in front of the kid, who stared at him in wide-eyed horror. He was trying to press further into the wall, which, of course, didn't work.
"W-What are y-you, man?" the scared youth finally asked.
"I'm your nightmare, kid. Someone you thought doesn't exist, someone you only hear from in horror stories." This was like in some corny movie, but he just wanted to say something like that.
The youth stared at him. Then realisation dawned and the kid's eyes became even wider. "A vampire? S-Shit, man, there ain't no vampires! This can't-can't be real!"
Amused Angel noticed that the kid had wet himself. But he couldn't resist any longer. He heard the heart beating like there was no tomorrow and he could smell the fear. So he leaned in closer…
The blood, oh it tasted so good! How long had he longed for that taste? How long had he longed for the hunt? For the fight? He often fought, but never did he fight his prey. He always fought against some big bad to save someone and when the bad guy was dealt with he couldn't kill the 'prey' he had fought for. That went against his nature. But he did it, day after day. Now, finally, he could let go. He could hunt and fight and drink as was his due and he enjoyed it.
He let the lifeless body fall to the ground, turned around and walked away.
He went home, to the hotel. His head was full of memories that didn't bother him as much as they had before.
When he arrived, he saw that it was dark inside. No one was there. He went upstairs into his apartment, took a shower, lay down on his bed and was fast asleep within minutes.
FIN