Disclaimer: None of the characters in this chapter are mine. I think we all know this.
Author's Notes: To be honest, I really wasn't going to write this story. There have been so many wonderful continuations to "Not Fade Away" and some terrific Illyria-introspection fics already written, so it seemed rather pointless. However, I suppose I just couldn't help myself, and the Blue Meanie does have her way of clomping around (in those huge war boots, no less) and stirring up plot bunnies. (The second chapter of his is much more original than the first, but I suppose we all have to do our necessary take on the battle scene.) So, I have made a tentative foray out of my usual Scooby-Doo fandom (Velma introspection, anyone?) and here is the result.
SacrificeAn Angel fanfiction by Littlesoprano
Chapter 1: The Battle
Illyria had never known such pain-- not in any battle, in any of her seven existences, in any the millions of years that she had ruled whole worlds-- had she suffered like this. It twisted her insides and smoldered like embers in her throat. It wasn't the wounds she was receiving from these pathetic excuses for warriors that the Wolf, Ram, and Hart were sending against them, for those hurts were nothing. It was something she'd only just learned to name...grief...and something she hadn't. Love.
Wesley had said he wouldn't teach her of love, but he had taught her of grief, and it had been repugnant to her, vile. A waste, if nothing. Mourning had made him so weak—at first. He'd drunk poison that made him act strangely, made him dare to insult her without fear that she could end his life at any moment. He'd sobbed silently in his sleep and cried out endlessly for what he could not have—his Fred. It was disgusting to her. It stank.
She had hated all emotions once, or at least those that she could not comprehend. She sensed them in others but thought herself above such trivialities, such aberrations. But in truth, she had always experienced feelings, especially those that suited her best. Pride. Power. Triumph. Rage. She'd even known the gut-bruising sting of betrayal. Once she had told Wesley that betrayal was neutral to her, unjudged and expected. But had she not cried out the day she was murdered, sealed still struggling into a tomb and cast into the well to dissolve into dust—cried not only in fierce anger, but in hurt disbelief? It was not rivals who had done that to her, as those ancient, near forgotten texts read. It had been two of those she held closest—the only two that knew the secret of how to defeat her. The only two she might have considered... friends.
It was other emotions that had so disgusted her when she came back into the world, making her sicken and sneer. Sorrow, love... these things showed weakness, and always had. There was no place for them in the time she had lived, not even a definition for them. But now they made her strong. Wesley would have laughed at the irony of it all, she knew, but Wesley would not laugh again. He was lost to her, and not even at the height of her power could she have brought him back again. Grief screamed in her blood at the thought of it, and she harnessed it and did war.
She carried no weapons into battle and needed none—none but the burning anguish that fueled her fists and feet and voice, for her bereft and rage-filled keening pierced the ears of the enemy and sent them to their knees. She fought for Wesley, the fallen, her beloved. She fought for Charles, whom Fred had loved, and who battled so bravely even as his life poured out. He could not last, but he would never retreat. She fought also for Winifred—even, at times, as her—for this fight would have been hers, too. Fred would have battled this evil alongside her friends-- to save others, on the side of good, but Illyria gave this very little consideration. In her day she had been beyond what she considered such mean trivialities—she had been neither good nor evil, only powerful. She killed now to defend her companions, which was noble enough, but also for revenge, retribution. Would Fred have sought such revenge? Illyria was not certain. Everyone spoke of Fred's goodness, her sweetness, her innocence. She was so mourned because she'd been the best part of their little circle, warm and shining and loving. That was true enough. Even so, Illyria knew well of the dark part of her under the surface, small but still existent. She had memories of one called Seidel, whom Fred had sought to destroy in retribution for his sending her to the hell called Pylea. She had craved violence then as Illyria craved it now.
Spike would understand, she thought, seeing him dispatch two demons easily. He was fighting well, her half-breed pet, and she felt pride in him. Had she still an army, she would have made him a favored warrior. The leader Angel, whom Fred had adored but she herself had not yet been able to trust, stood strong as well. But Charles… Charles was failing. Whipping her head around, she saw him falter, stumbling against the alley wall with what looked to be his final steps. A demon menaced him, and, snarling, she cut it down. How dare he try to harm her favorite… her…what? For a flash of a moment, she thought she felt concern for him, too, and it caused her no shame, only confusion. Was this Fred's concern—Fred's love—or her own? It had been so simple to tell in the beginning, when Fred was still just a shell, not even worth the trouble of naming. She was electrical impulses and fragments of memories and whispers of instincts, emotions. Fred had consisted only of a whole, separate bank of habits and recollections that Illyria drew on as she chose. Now... now the line between them was so blurred in places that she could not always tell the difference between them, or where stirrings within her came from. It was more than memories; Wesley had said they were all more than memories. What it was she didn't know. All she knew was that her final words to Wesley as Fred were hers, too, as were the tears she'd never known she was capable of shedding.
Thought of her slain guide brought more tears pricking behind her cold eyes. For the second time that day, and the second time in her lifetime—she wept. She'd existed for longer than time could record, lived seven lives at once—and she'd never mourned in any of them. This time, though, the tears did not come slowly as they had in Vail's chambers; they sprang from her eyes, which were no longer icy and empty but a hot electric blue, glowing with a wild energy. They hissed as they fell and sizzled into the hot rain. Her face was twisted, her teeth bared. She tipped back her head and roared in pain, bereft. The burning tears blurred her eyes, mixing with the rain so that she could not see the enemy, the alley, the ground... She could not see how they all shrank and grew smaller before her until the tops of the buildings scraped roughly against her sides.
For the first time since she had been re-born, the great Illyria could open her jaws.
Angel saw it first, and thought for certain that they were done for. The demon in its huge size dwarfed the rooftops, but was moving swiftly on its talon-like feet despite being boxed in by the alley walls. It was fierce in it's grace, half reptilian, half almost bird-like, with tentacle-arms thrashing. The head could have almost been human, but it was hidden behind a metal helm. Only sparking blue eyes, ominously narrow, glowed in the darkness that hid its face.
Gunn, weakened, managed a stumbling turn towards Angel's sightline, and what little color he had left in his face drained until it was a sickly death-gray. "What's happening?" he gasped out, unafraid but stunned. "And where's Illyria?" She'd been fighting staunchly by his side mere minutes before, but he'd lost sight of her in the roiling sea of demons. Heaven knew they would need her now, though he doubted even she would last long against this. Before her power had been drained, maybe—but not now.
A picture had flashed into Angel's mind, one from an ancient text that Wesley had shown him. "That's her," he stated in dread certainty.
"What?"
"That's Illyria." He stared up at the towering creature, radiating with power, and for the first time understood all of the former goddess' insufferable arrogance, her high-handed pride that she wielded like a cudgel. "It's her true form—her native form."
Spike too was staring, shaking his head in disbelief and squinting into the hard rain. "Ol' Blue's gone Jurassic on us," he uttered, trying to reconcile this monster image with that of the blue-haired demoness who had been his sparring partner, even something approaching a friend. He'd liked getting under her skin, using pet names and rankling her just for fun. "Funny, I was just starting to find her sort of attractive. I think I'm bloody well off that now."
Locked as they were in mortal combat with a demon horde, a joke hardly seemed appropriate, but they were in no danger for the moment. The battlefield had fallen completely still, but for the crashing movements of Illyria as she closed in. The enemy were as thunderstruck as the three heroes, and held their weapons in fear-frozen hands. Even so, Angel's senses flashed a warning as the creature that was Illyria turned it's hidden face down over the demon army, the gesture seething with menace in its subtlety.
"We've got to get out of here," he said, authority in his tone.
"What?" Spike shouted back over the rain, not comprehending how Angel could leave this fight that he had led them in. "In case you haven't noticed, the odds have just turned in our favor!"
"Once she gets started she might not know the difference between us and them." He worried also that she might just go on killing long after the last demon lay dead-- what was to stop her from conquering whatever stood in her path? They certainly couldn't... but if it came to that, Angel knew that he would have to try. "We take cover—for now."
The demons too wilted back and tried to retreat, terrified and trembling at the sight of the ancient goddess in her true form. Once she'd led vast armies into battle, with thousands marching ahead simply to announce her arrival and strike fear into the hearts of those who dared oppose her. It had been satisfying, but she needed none of that now.
The army didn't stand a chance.
They fell before her wrath like mown grass, foot soldiers and giants alike going down not singly, but in waves. Hundreds were crushed beneath her as she moved, not even having the chance to attack. The dragon she time-froze and then swatted from the air with an almost careless flick of one tentacle, dispatching it as easily as a human would a fly. Blows rained upon her from fist and axe and sword, most glancing off her impenetrably thick scales and armor. The few that did hit their marks stung, but in the way that an insect bite stings—more an annoyance than a real hurt. And as she had vowed, she repaid every sting in full.
Before the fight began she'd told Charles he had ten minutes left in him at best. The entire battle lasted nine. She fought until her eyes behind the dark helm glazed and blurred and she could no longer see what she was killing. She slashed and snapped at the empty air for another full minute until she realized that her limbs no longer made contact with the hated forms of her enemies.
She'd destroyed them all. Every last one.
Lifting her face to the stars, she let out a victory cry that made the earth shudder, then realized she was shuddering, too—shaking. The uncomfortable pressing weight of her grief still constricted in her chest, the cry failing to dislodge it. Again and again she wailed, each becoming less and less a call a triumph and more and more one of despair. She'd dealt all this death, but the death of Wesley closed again on her like a fog, refusing to let her go. The world spun and she fell with it, helpless as her vision grew black.
When it lifted, she was lying face down on the wet pavement, her form once again human, trembling violently with spent fury, spent feeling. She couldn't raise herself up and didn't try. She was weak as she had been the day they had pulled her powers from her with the cannon, and couldn't yet process why she had managed to temporarily regain them. She was weak as a kitten, leaden-limbed, completely soaked and half-drowned in the rain.
It was an uncharacteristically cautious Spike who finally approached her, crouching down to place and hand on her shoulder. A glass-sharp warning stopped his movement mid-way.
"Do not touch me," she hissed, her voice like gravel in her throat. She got to her feet without his assistance—her pride would not allow such a thing-- though her legs could barely support her and she nearly pitched forward no sooner had she risen.
As she struggled to keep her feet, Gunn fell, the adrenaline that had been supporting his mortally-wounded body finally giving way. Illyria's head whipped toward the sound, her eyes widening. She was at his side in less than a moment and looking demandingly at Angel, who was examining the wounds. Her mouth wanted to form the words to ask of his condition, but she could not allow such a thing—such concern—to be shown to all. It was bad—or confusing—enough that she experienced it at all.
Her feelings for Wesley were different.
"He'll live," Angel said, voice low and grave but relieved. "If we get him help soon enough."
"Then get it," Illyria ordered, flinging out her hand in an instinctive gesture before even considering her drained condition. Despite it, a portal appeared, swirling blue. "This will take you wherever you need to go." Spike and Angel didn't need another prompting, feeling somehow that she'd earned their trust. Gathering Gunn over their arms between them, they leapt into the portal before it closed.
Illyria stood alone in the dark alley, surrounded by the wreckage of demon bodies, and simply watched the empty space for a moment. The two vampires had not asked her why she did not accompany them, nor was it their business. She had other matters to attend to. Wesley's body still lay in Vail's chambers; she'd had to leave it before the battle. But never would she allow it to stay there, wasting away like carrion in the house of the enemy who had killed him. No. He would have the rites of the best of her warriors, that she would make sure of.
She would see to it that he was never forgotten.
Chapter 2, "The Chooser of the Slain," will be up very soon.