Title: A Double Heart For My Single One
Author: AutumnEvening
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Well, I do, just not anything you'll be reading here. Please don't sue me, I already have more debt than I can handle.
Summary: Alt season 3. Angel comes back considerably more traumatized than in cannon. Angry that Angel is back and feeling Buffy is to blame Spike picks up on the mind games where Angelus left off. Can a young Buffy deal with so much pain, or will she eventually take the out that is offered to her?
Pairing: Buffy/Angel. Some Oz/Willow and Spike/Drusilla. I'm going to pretend Xander and Cordilia never happened.
Rating: T-PG-13. I think (if my descriptions of what Angel experienced are too harsh or graphic, please tell me so I can change it to M).
And Remember the adage; Readers rock but reviewers rule!
When he'd attacked her she was sure he would kill her. He had every reason; she'd betrayed his love and sent him to Hell, but he was so week that even his most savage efforts couldn't stand under the Slayer. Then, later, when she touched him he lashed out at her, snarling like a beaten dog, but why shouldn't he? He'd been beaten and burned, she could see the proof of that on his once-perfect skin -- and it had lasted for hundreds of years if what Giles had said had any truth to it. She ran then, away from the mansion, away from the burnt shape of a body in the floor, away from him, but mostly away from what she'd seen. In those few moments of compassion and pain, when she could not help but reach out and touch his decimated form, when her skin first came in gentle contact with his, it had been as though she herself was transported to Hell.
Before her stood towers of crisscrossing medal, upon which hundreds of bodies were tied, burning, and lighting up the ever red sky in great spires of flame. The sounds of screaming echoed through ever crevice and every body. Long wagons drawn by men, whipped and abused until their bodies could hardly sustain them, or couldn't at all, and then they were thrown to the side of the road to weep and be trampled. In valleys that reeked of feces and burnt flesh lay thousands of skeletons, but they were not the bodies of the dead. They were alive, living bones, souls wracked with agony, denied sight and sound until their flesh and organs oh-so-slowly rebuilt themselves, until their screams could be heard, and then it started again, because in Hell you cannot die no matter how much you wish it.
She jerked away then, jerked away and ran from what she saw, hoping against hope that it was only her imagination, and not the unnatural sight that being the Slayer had brought her.
Then when Pete had attacked her she hadn't really known what to think. Was he a monster or a man? Could men be monsters? What was he? He was stronger than her, savage, and later she would learn that he embodied a level of savagery that only comes with a soul, and she was loosing. Than Angel was their, angry and violent, and she thought that surely he'd come for her. But as she'd ducked and dodged, moves that were so instinctive to the Slayer, he passed her and flung himself at Pete. Then, for a stunned moment, she had no clue what was going on. The creatures in front of her battled and her mind could not tell who was the man, or who she wanted to win. Wouldn't they both kill her if they did? Pete had gotten free for a moment, and come after her. Her question was answered; with a look of such indescribable rage Angel wrapped the chains that still hung from his wrists around Pete's neck and snapped it.
He took a step toward her, over the limp form of her former classmate, and Buffy took an instinctive step back. This was it. This was it. But his next step had faltered and Buffy found herself rooted in place. The love she had never lost welling up inside of her. Was he injured? Was he ok? At first he seemed confused, and as he approached her there was no recognition in his eyes, but then it had come. She could see it, the moment that he truly saw her, and he was so close she couldn't have done anything if he did attack her, but he didn't. Instead he'd whispered her name in a voice of such anguish and longing that her hardening heart tore at the sound of it, and he dropped to his knees before her, wrapping his arms around her waist, and he wept.