Angel and all associated characters are the property of Mutant Enemy Productions and Twentieth Century Fox.  I'm just borrowing Illyria and company for a bit, that's all.

Please don't archive or otherwise distribute this story without my permission.

Spoilers for the final episode of Angel as Team Angel fight to survive.

Illyria's thoughts at the beginning of the final battle.

Angel

Grief.

by

Alasdair T. McLean

I feel grief.

It consumes and sickens me even as the legions of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart threaten to overwhelm my companions and I.

He was beneath me from the first.  They all were, and yet I find I will mourn their passing as I would my own or that of my realm – as I do his passing.

I do not understand this.  It makes no sense.

I am Illyria and although I am diminished from what I once was I am still far greater than those I fight alongside this night.

We cannot win against such odds and I find that I do not care.

I gather this alien grief and release it as I did once before, this time launching Angel into the air towards his chosen target.  I do not understand why he chose the dracoform.  One death is as any other – momentarily satisfying and yet still leaving me hollow.

I do not understand why, at the last, Wesley accepted my offer to assume the Burkle persona for him when he had refused me before.  Or what compelled me to make the offer in the first place.  I wore that form for her parents to spare myself the rotten stench of their grief – I thought that offering her to Wesley would . . . his grief more than any of the others tainted the world around him, around me, staining it with nauseating sorrow. 

But it was unnatural and, as he said, a lie. 

I do not understand what made him choose the lie.

And yet . . .

I . . .

I find I desire his continued presence.

All on this earth should bow before me and worship, trembling at my feet.

I am less than I was.

Wesley is dead.

I . . . wish he was not.

I find I wish to be with him once more.

This makes no sense.  Do I desire my own destruction?  Have I been infected by the memories left in this body I now inhabit?

Aaaah!

They dare to touch me?  To attempt to do me harm?

There is no time to utterly destroy all who threaten us, so . . . a head, an arm, a leg, a wing.  Incapacitate first, kill if possible, but do not slow down.

I will not bow down to such as them.

I will not submit.

I will not . . .

End.