Written for the 2017 IWRY. Maybe this time it really is my final "Angel" AU.
Angel slipped into the Bronze, torn. He was in love with Buffy Summers. There was no getting around that fact. And now that he'd admitted it to himself, the way forward was clear. She needed to know the truth about him before she got in it as deep as he was. He thought far too highly of her to continue with this lie of omission, but he dreaded her reaction. The very best he felt he could hope for was that she would eventually be willing to make use of his information again, but a far more likely scenario was that he'd find himself at the pointy end of her stake. What he was least certain of was how fiercely he would fight for his life if she was the one who wanted to end it.
He wove his way through the club's patrons until he was behind the stairs to the loft. He spotted Buffy just as she got up from a table with the doe-eyed redhead and the floppy-haired boy—Willow and Xander, if he was remembering right. She looked downcast, and suddenly Angel was full of doubt. Was this really the best moment to drop unpleasant truths on her?
Halfway to the exit, she froze and turned to face the stairs. Reflexively, he tried to melt into the shadows, but there was a rather short, dweeby kid in an oversized striped polo already walking out of them. Angel managed to avoid colliding with the boy, who continued on his way none the wiser, but when he looked back in Buffy's direction, she was staring directly at him.
In an effort to make it look like he hadn't been trying to escape before she saw him, he nodded towards the back exit and made his way over to it.
"I'm guessing it's too much to hope that this is a social call," said Buffy, walking through the door he was holding open for her.
"There's something I have to tell you," he said, letting the door fall shut behind them. They were alone in the alley behind the Bronze.
"So tell me," said Buffy, turning to face him with her arms folded defensively over her chest. His gaze was drawn to the cross necklace he'd given her. He hadn't seen her without it since the Harvest. The sight had always given him a little thrill of pleasure before, but now it only seemed like a visual reminder of all the reasons he didn't deserve her. "What grave danger will I be facing this week?"
He grimaced. "That's not what this is about."
"Then this is a social call?" She looked confused and tired, but also a tiny bit hopeful.
"I was sent to help you," he said. "That was supposed to be all it was. You deserve the truth before anything else happens."
"What do you mean, 'sent'? The truth about what?" Now she looked apprehensive.
The sight made Angel's throat tighten. He'd gone over what he would say when they got to this point a thousand times—how he would explain so that she wouldn't hate him. He'd considered telling her a story of a foolish young man from 18th-century Galway that would end in revealing that the young man had been him. He'd considered writing it all in a letter and handing it to her or leaving it somewhere she would find it. But now that the moment was upon him, words failed him.
"I'm sorry," he said, and before his courage could fail him too, he closed his eyes and brought his demonic features to the fore.
†
Whatever Buffy had expected when Angel said she deserved the truth, it wasn't this. Her right hand flew to clutch the cross necklace he'd given her while her left went to cover her mouth. The mysterious guy she'd been fantasizing about since he gave her his jacket—maybe before—was a vampire. "No," she gasped, as if by denying it she could make it untrue. She felt cold and numb. "When did this—?" she began. She couldn't finish the question, but she would find the vampire who did this to him and put a stake through its heart. Maybe then she'd be able to muster the strength to do the same to him.
"In 1753," he said. Even through the ridged forehead, glowing yellow eyes, and sharp fangs, he looked anguished. She'd never seen a look like that on a vampire's face before, fangs or no fangs, not to mention that he had made no move to attack her. But she didn't get a chance to wonder what any of that meant, because suddenly sounds of growling were coming from multiple sides, and two tall, burly vampires in freaking armor emerged from the shadows of the alley behind Angel.
"Well done, Angelus," said a voice from right behind her. "You got the Slayer alone."
Before Buffy could so much as feel betrayed, Angel bared his fangs with a roar like a lion and launched himself, not at her, but at the nearest vampire knight. She didn't wait to find out if it was a trick, rounding instead on the one who'd spoken, whipping a stake out of her purse as she went.
This guy was as armored as the other two. More importantly, he had a sword, which she had to duck as it came slashing towards her. She managed to knock it out of his hand with a well-placed kick, but couldn't get out of the way in time to avoid the crashing blow his fist landed on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground in a heap.
Stars flashed briefly before her eyes, and she had a split second when they cleared to see that Angel was struggling to fend off both of the other vampires by himself. He didn't appear to be winning, but he was definitely keeping them busy. She got back to her feet and turned her attention to her opponent just as his hand was reaching to retrieve the sword. Without pausing to think, she threw the stake at him. It buried itself in his wrist, and he drew back with a howl of pain. She made a mad dash for the sword and managed to seize it before he had finished ripping the stake back out. With a flash of steel, she beheaded him, and his empty armor clanked to the ground in a cloud of dust.
She retrieved her stake from his remains and turned to face Angel and the other vampires. The one with the ponytail had Angel's arms pinned behind his back while the one with the goatee closed in. She ran forward just as Angel used Ponytail's grip as leverage to kick out at Goatee with both legs, and she swung the sword again when Goatee staggered within range. A second later, Angel threw Ponytail over his shoulder. He landed with a metallic thud on the asphalt between them.
"Traitor!" he rasped at Angel. "The Master will destroy you!"
Buffy used her stake to shut him up for good, though she maintained her grip on the sword.
†
"It isn't safe out here," said Angel as Buffy stood up straight again. He stared around in every direction, but he couldn't hear any other vampires approaching. That didn't mean they wouldn't. "If the Master sent the Three to kill you, that means he's going on the offensive. You should get back to your house. They won't be able to touch you there unless you invite them in." He started for the mouth of the alley.
"Why are you helping me?" said Buffy, hurrying to catch up. She didn't sound hostile so much as bewildered, and he supposed he should feel grateful for that. "You're one of them."
"I am and I'm not," he said. "It's complicated."
"Then make it simple!" she demanded, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him to face her.
He sighed and looked her in the eyes, reluctant to have this conversation at all, let alone somewhere so exposed. "I have a soul," he said. "For a hundred and fifty years, I was just like the rest of them. Worse. But then I killed the wrong Romani girl, and her clan restored my soul in revenge."
Buffy wrinkled her nose. "How is that revenge? Why not just kill you?"
"Dying is far easier than living with a conscience when you've done the things I've done." He took another step and grimaced, clutching at his side.
"Hey, you're hurt!" said Buffy, moving in close and tugging at his hand. It came away from the wound bloody. That had been his first real fight in decades, and in the rush of adrenaline, he had apparently failed to notice that one of the Three had stabbed him. Even now, he was more aware of her hands on his skin than he was of the pain.
"I'll be fine," he said. She did not look convinced.
"You're coming with me to my place so I can patch this up."
Her expression told him that it would be pointless to explain about vampire healing, and the wound did hurt pretty badly, now that he was paying attention to it. He didn't protest. He was starting to think that the Three had done him a favor by showing up when they did.
†
When Buffy and Angel arrived outside her house (after no additional encounters with vampire assassins), it was to find her mom's Jeep already parked in the driveway. "Crap," said Buffy. "Do you think you can get up onto the roof?" She pointed towards the second floor window on the left, mentally thanking her mom for insisting she clean her room over the weekend. "That one's my window. I'll deal with Mom and meet you as soon as I can."
She looked around at him, but he had vanished. She spun back to face the house and saw that he was already perched on the roof in front of her bedroom window. "Show-off!" she hissed. He only smirked in reply.
It took Buffy an agonizingly long fifteen minutes to get away from her mom, who had had quite an eventful evening at the art gallery and was oblivious to her daughter's complete lack of enthusiasm on the subject.
She entered her room and was bemused to see Angel still crouching on the roof outside her window. She lifted it open and frowned at him. It hadn't been locked. "Why are you still outside?"
"You haven't explicitly invited me in yet." He reached toward the open window, and the skin of his hand flattened as if he was pressing it against glass. "That's what I meant when I said you'd be safer at home. No vampire can come into a home uninvited."
"Oh," said Buffy. "That's good to know." She slowly lifted her own hand to hover just millimeters from his, then dropped it back to her side, blushing. Had everything she'd learned about him in the last hour really changed nothing for her? "Come in, Angel."
The resistance against his hand vanished instantly, and he slipped into the room with remarkable grace and only a tiny wince, considering the size of the bloodstain on his shirt.
"Over here," she said, and she led the way to her bathroom. She kept an extensive supply of bandages and antiseptic ointment hidden at the back of the cupboard under her sink. "I've got some bandages and stuff," she said. Then, hoping she wasn't blushing, "Um, can you take your jacket and your shirt off?"
He winced as he did so, but managed easily enough, and soon he was bare from the waist up. When Buffy shut the cabinet and stood, hands full of bandages, ointment, and a washcloth, the breath seemed to freeze in her lungs at the sight of his back. This was ridiculous. How could shoulders be this attractive? "Nice tattoo," she said, struggling to keep it cool. "Is there a story behind it?"
Angel stepped into the bathroom and leaned against the counter, and she noticed that he didn't cast a reflection in the bathroom mirror behind him. Now that she knew what he was, she couldn't believe she'd missed the signs before. She'd only ever seen him at night or in shadow, he was the palest person in Southern California, and he hadn't actually touched the cross he'd given her. Maybe having a soul made all of that stuff less obvious. Then again, she thought, glancing at his bare torso again and swallowing hard, maybe she was just shallow.
"It's based on an image in the Book of Kells," he said. Buffy frowned in puzzlement. "One of the most famous copies of the Bible from back when they were all handwritten by monks," he elaborated. "Before the Gypsies cursed me, I spent a lot of time coming up with ways to blaspheme against the Church. The tattoo was by far the mildest one."
The memory seemed to have left a bitter taste in his mouth, and Buffy was sorry she'd brought it up. She ran the washcloth under the tap, then set to cleaning his wound. On the surface, it was just a straight cut that oozed blood, but it was pretty deep. "Back at the Bronze, you didn't answer my question, she said." She glanced up and saw that his brow had furrowed slightly. "You said you were sent to help me. Who sent you?"
"Some guy named Whistler," he said, wincing as she progressed to the disinfecting ointment stage. "He found me in New York and told me I had a chance to become somebody. I didn't really believe him, but then he brought me to L.A." She unfolded a large, square bandage and pressed it to his wound. He caught her hand and held it there, fixing her with his gaze. "I saw the Watcher find you on the front steps of your school and tell you that you were the Slayer."
Buffy stared at him, thinking back to the day her world had changed forever, going from clothes and boys and cheerleading to secrets and monsters and darkness in an instant. "You were there?" she said.
He reached up and cupped her face in a large, cool hand. "I've had my soul for a hundred years, and I never thought I could do anything useful with it until I saw you."
"Why would seeing me change anything for you?" said Buffy, voice barely above a whisper. Her life was a hot mess, but he was looking at her like she was some kind of revelation.
"You were just a kid with your whole life in front of you, and then destiny came along and hijacked it. I don't know why that struck me so hard, but I've both seen and been the worst of what you were going to have to face, and if there was a chance I could lift just a little bit of that burden for you, then that's what I was going to do."
Buffy's heart swelled and moisture blurred her vision. "You have," she said. She couldn't find the words to tell him what it meant to have someone understand exactly what she'd gone through since becoming the Slayer, or how strange it was that the one who did understand was a vampire, so instead, she did the only thing that made sense: she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.
†
It was like something out of a dream—except that even Angel's dreams weren't usually so pleasant. Less than an hour after learning that he was a vampire, Buffy had not only not tried to kill him, but she was actually kissing him. The intensity of the kiss grew rapidly as he matched her enthusiasm. Within a few seconds, he wrapped his arms around her to hold her close, but that proved to be a mistake, as it brought the cross necklace into contact with his bare chest. He might not have cared enough to stop kissing her, but the sizzling sound had Buffy pulling back.
"Oh no!" she said, half-horrified, half-amused, her cheeks a brilliant shade of pink as she stared at the welt the cross had left on his skin. "I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be tending your wounds, not adding more."
"Don't worry," he chuckled. "Occupational hazard."
"I'll just have to remember that for next time."
"Next time?" he said, raising an eyebrow. He didn't know when he'd felt happier.
Her face went even redder. "I—um, I mean, if you wanted more kissing to happen, I wouldn't complain or anything."
He smiled and bent to kiss her again.
I've been playing around with different ideas about what would happen if Angel had actually told Buffy what he is before she could find out in a really compromising way. (Though I suppose getting jumped by the Three the second after he vamps out in front of her is about equally as compromising as vamping out mid-kiss. Whatever.) It's based on my headcanon that Angel was in the Bronze because he was trying to work up the courage to tell her the truth, which would explain why he vanished when she looked around. If he'd been there to warn her about the Three, I don't think he would've tried to stay out of sight. So, operating under that assumption, I'm quite happy with the version I finally landed on, and it really is all thanks to Jonathan.
Of course, this doesn't address Darla at all. I might do something about that later, but for now, this seemed fairly complete with the ending it has.