SUMMARY: BtVS/His Dark Materials fusion. A look into Season Two. Buffy/Angel.
WORDCOUNT: ~1150
THANK YOU to Kairos for the title suggestion. :)
SCALES
by Leni
Written for 3am_moonlight. Prompt: Any/His Dark Materials fusion, any/any, voluntarily allowing someone to touch your dæmon is the most intimate thing you can do..
"We should run away," she had suggested once.
They'd been young, young and resentful because Father had thrashed Liam over the muddy knees he'd sported when they'd returned home; while Father's daemon - sharp-clawed Mirth - had growled and then swatted at her painfully. That the mud betrayed they'd dallied in play with the other boys when they'd been supposed to deliver an urgent errand had not been something they'd cared to consider - before the thrashing or after.
"And go where?" Liam had sulked, arms around his knees and glaring at the wall of his room, where he'd been sent to without his supper.
"Anywhere!"
Liam had gathered her closer and petted her fur, since it was a day when she'd stayed in her rabbit form. "It would be nice," Liam had sighed at last.
"It would be perfect," she'd corrected.
He had smiled, just a little.
But both of them had known that Galway would be their life.
She likes Buffy's daemon.
His name is Peyton, and both he and Buffy refuse to say why.
She thinks it's a cute name.
Peyton preened when she told him so.
"What was it like?" Peyton asks one night at the graveyard, while their humans wait for a vampire to rise. It should happen soon, the daemon has reformed on top of the grave - a thin owl that bats his wings threateningly whenever he feels eyes on him.
She remembers hissing at Darla when she first awoke again.
"Being one of them?"
Peyton nods, his big bulgy eyes hiding a deep-seated terror as best as his youth allows. She makes a mental note to tell Angel to promise Buffy he'd rather kill her than allow her to rise. "It was..." She is supposed to say horrible, a nightmare, but she likes Peyton. She might even respect him. So she tells him the truth: "Liberating."
His eyes widen.
"If you have will enough," she clarifies. "Most don't bother." She remembers being proud to be one of the few, to climb to Angel's shoulder and whisper the ideas she knew would delight him the most.
His paw comes up to scratch the side of his muzzle, much like Buffy plays with the ends of her hair when she's uncomfortable. "I don't... I wouldn't -"
She nods - "Of course not." - but she knows otherwise. He and Buffy, with all their power and none of the restraints tying them to their duty, they would make terror their signature and laugh as chaos danced to their tune. "You won't find out," she promises. "I swear."
She looks at Buffy.
Buffy looks at her.
The bond between her and Angel twists and screams in her chest, protesting the distance between them.
"You're the smallest," Buffy says, an apology in her voice even as she steels herself to do the unthinkable.
No. Not unthinkable. Angel has thought about it. Dreamed about it. Paced the apartment for hours before sundown and Buffy's arrival, convincing himself not to push too far.
She has kept her silence (there have been many silences between her and Angel in the last century, weeks and months when they cannot meet each other's eyes), but she has wondered...
Doesn't mean either of them is actually ready for it. Not now. Not like this.
She shudders at the thought, but not completely in revulsion.
"Do it," she says, pretending she hasn't noticed Peyton's fascination.
Do he and Buffy have the same conversation she and Angel pointedly don't?
Afterwards, limping and still bleeding from injuries he refuses to confess before Buffy's friends, Angel carries her home cradled to his chest.
But they don't talk about it.
"I don't want to go," she tells Angel. Whines, really.
Angel's shoulders hunch a bit further, but his attention remains fixed on the little box he's been playing with since he took it out of the back of his drawer. They bought the ring on a whim, because they'd seen the design and, for the first time in a century, looked at something that reminded them of home without being assaulted by the wrong memories.
Instead they'd remembered Mother's smile as she and her daemon gazed at her own ring, Father's pride in his business while Mirth stood guard at the door, the weight of Kathy - with little Garth cuddled in her pinafore pocket - as she trustingly let her older brother carry her to bed.
They'd felt warmth, and though they would never atone, they'd glimpsed a bit of... peace? All because they'd imagined Buffy wearing a little piece of silver etched with an Irish design.
"Will you give it to her?"
"I shouldn't," Angel says. "She's not ready."
He - they - are not ready, he means.
But she and Angel have been together - have been one - for too long. Sometimes, when they don't speak, it's just because there's no need for words.
"Don't tell her everything," she advises. "Not if we're saying good-bye."
At the docks, Angel tells Buffy the obvious parts: the friendship, the loyalty, the love. She carries too many responsibilities already, to add their innermost struggles to them.
Peyton whimpers, "Come back. Just come back," as he pushes his face against her belly. Two hundred years, and he's the only mammalian daemon that she's met, who never minds rubbing his nose against scales.
She flicks her tongue out to caress his drooped ears. "I'll try," is the best she can promise.
She doesn't have to try too hard.
They are ambushed.
They are taken.
They escape.
The four of them make it to Angel's apartment; sweaty, a bit bloody, and estrangely exhilarated. "You're staying!" Peyton yips, licking her from ears to the tip of her tail.
For the first time in a century, she wants to chirp in joy.
They are not the only ones celebrating their sudden reprieve.
Buffy and Angel make love, because that's the way of humans in love when this much emotion envelops them. She and Peyton lie down on the floor beside the bed, exchanging confidences and secret hopes.
It's such a wonderful thing, to hope again.
She is already half-asleep when she feels the weight of Peyton be lifted from beside her. Her eyes open slowly, but she's unsurprised to find the other daemon snoring into Buffy's pillow. They don't deal well with distance, the two of them.
Buffy looks down at her. "Wanna come?" She must be exhausted, because she reaches down without hesitation, and only stops when her fingers are inches away. They look at each other, and Buffy blushes. "Is it okay?" she asks, twisting a bit so her question encompasses both her boyfriend and his daemon.
Angel raises his head and, for the first time in a century, grins as he meets his daemon's eyes. They both nod in equal eagerness. "Please?"
Buffy brightens, too, and scoops her up to lie in a tiny space between her and Angel. "Is it okay?" she repeats, her voice as shy as her touch. Nonetheless, her fingertips linger on the soft underside of the reptilian chin, and her smile softens.
Angel's hand reaches out and, after a brief exchange of glances, comes down to caress Peyton's furry scruff. Peyton wuffs happily in his sleep.
"It's perfect," he whispers, leaning over to kiss Buffy again.
And for the first time in a century, she and Angel are in complete agreement:
Perfection it is.
The End
17/03/13