Apocalypse: Sunnydale
by Ducks
Part I
American West Coast, 2015
'This is exactly like the Civil War...' Angel thought as he hauled himself out of the sewer entry. It was barely two minutes after sunset, and already the creatures of the night seemed to be everywhere.
But not as plentiful as the soldiers... skeletons of men and other creatures, haunted husks and shells of beings sucked dry by 15 years of brutal war, who staggered along the highway all around him.
He was exhausted, and famished. He'd been walking for two weeks straight to get here, from the Golden Might Correctional Facility in Northern Washington; a prison for soldiers of the Resistance -- for demons on the wrong side of the war. Or the right, depending on how you looked at it. Rumor had it that they were one of the last prisons to be liberated, long after the fighting had ceased.
In the South at the end of the American Civil War, the scene had been much like this, he remembered... men rushing home as fast as their broken bodies and spirits would allow, like a long stream of the walking dead, only to find that home simply wasn't there anymore. All that remained there were burnt out hollows where fine houses stood, and gravestones to take the place of the beloved who once lived in them.
If Angel hadn't been so certain of his direction and his destination, he never would have recognized this wasteland as Sunnydale at all. It was hard to even remember the landmarks that once lined Main Street... He and Buffy had walked its length, hand in hand, a million times...
Of course, there was nothing left of the streets here, now. Only rubble and ruins to tell that it had once been a thriving community.
But even with the landscape scraped clean of landmark by fire and bombs, he knew exactly how to get where he was going. It was only the thought of this day that had kept him alive all these years... through the horror of the war, and through the worse nightmare of the years after. Through all of the pain, both physical and otherwise, that he had suffered, the knowledge that he would one day be back here again kept him going... kept him rising each dark and moonless day underground.
Ravello Drive looked much like the rest of the West Coast. The quaint, tree-lined streets were now no more than dirt and rubble-strewn paths, worn flat by tanks and hovercraft, millions of feet, and fiery magick. He came down the last block, and his unnecessary breath caught in his throat with a choking hitch.
Buffy's house was gone, too. And nothing, not even the ageless oak tree that was once his ladder to her window, was left to mark where it had been. He stood on the edge of the road and gaped at the yawning emptiness of the lot.
Gone. Just like everything, and everyone, else. Was she gone too?
Angel felt the first real wave of hopelessness wash over him in a crippling wave. Gone... he hadn't realized how much he had been expecting her to be here, waiting for him, when he returned... how much of himself he had invested in the hope that he might one day see her again...
He collapsed on to a heap of sandbags piled behind him, and wept for the first time in 15 years.
"Are you alright, son?" he heard a soft voice ask from beside him suddenly. A frail hand touched his shoulder.
Angel knew he should move, or run, or something... but all he could do was hide his face in his hands as he sobbed.
The sandbags beside him creaked a little as the stranger sat down.
"Are you a soldier, dear?" she asked gently.
Angel nodded, wiping at his face with his tattered sleeve.
"Oh, my..." the voice said, "Was this your home?"
Angel looked up, and conjured a crystal clear image of the little bungalow, and its precious inhabitants, in his mind.
He nodded again.
"I'm sorry, son..." she murmured.
Angel looked up at his companion at last. She was a handsome old woman, who probably would have made a perfect stereotypical grandmother in one of those old-fashioned lemonade commercials, were it not for her khaki battle gear and black flack jacket.
He stared at her.
"Have you only just now come home from the front?" she asked.
Angel blinked. It had been so long since he had made polite conversation with someone, he wasn't sure he remembered how anymore. Back before the war, he knew some might have thought of him as socially adequate, maybe even occasionally charming... but not anymore.
"I've been in prison for nine years." He said flatly, and turned away from her to stare straight forward once again.
The woman seemed unsurprised by his answer. She regarded Angel carefully for a moment. There was something odd about the boy... something that made her sixth sense tingle... something that couldn't be explained away by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She dismissed it. It mattered little... he seemed to have given up everything for the right side, at least...
//Such a young man...Must have been no more than a child when he left here, poor thing...//
She rose and reached out a aged hand to him. "I'm Carol. Carol Blue." She said.
Angel looked up into her steely gray eyes, and then down at her outstretched hand.
"Angel." he said, and shook it.
Carol smiled warmly at him. His hands were frigid, as though he had been ill for a long time. She felt yet another pang of sympathy for him.
"You must be starved." She said, "And you're freezing. Why don't you let me take you to the Centre. You can get a meal there... medical care... a wash... perhaps even a bed, if you're lucky."
Angel looked back to where Buffy's house once stood for a moment. Then he got up and followed Carol Blue up the street without another word.
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He didn't know what he had expected the Centre to be, but it certainly wasn't this. Carol had led him down into the sewers nearest the Docks, which he immediately recognized. The path suddenly veered to the left, through what looked like a blast hole in the sewer wall, and led into a network of tunnels he was certain he'd never seen before, and he had spent many hours scouring the hundreds of miles of sewer beneath Sunnydale's streets... Each hallway within was brightly lit from a source he couldn't readily identify, but which even his prison-dulled senses told him might be magick.
Carol obviously knew her way through these paths. She led him resolutely by the hand for miles, never so much as stopping for a moment to catch her breath. Physically, she might be three times his age, but she was clearly in far better shape.
It seemed a long, exhausting while, but soon, Angel began to pick up sensory signals that surprised him. The salt of the ocean... the musk of thriving plant life... and the calm hum and sweet, living smell of hundreds of human beings. Carol stopped suddenly in front of an unusual outcropping in the western wall, and leaned close to it.
"Foraminis." She said softly. Angel was startled to hear Latin again after all these years. The magickal languages were forbidden, in Demon prisons.
The walls began to shake and hum loudly, and in a moment, the boulder before them disappeared, and they walked, hand-in-hand, through the large opening that took its place.
It was the most magnificent thing Angel had ever seen.
The area yawned open before them, an incredible underground marketplace. The streets went on for as far as he could see, and every square inch seemed packed with carts, quaint shop-fronts, animals...
And people. Thousands of them. Of all races, ages, and both genders. Here and there, he even noticed non-humans wandering about, looking for all the world like this was their home, too. The air was bright with colorful banners and balloons, and rich with the smells he always associated with the market. Fresh, hot meats and sweet confections, foaming beer, cheap perfume, soft cottons and silks, and the musk of animals and humans alike.
The sensations assaulted Angel, causing him to freeze in his tracks and grip Carol's hand like a lost child. After smelling nothing but dirt and misery, pain and death, for fifteen years, all of this... all of this normalcy... was almost too much for him to bear.
He was suddenly torn between the urge to turn and run, and the desire to fall to his knees and weep to the Powers -- thank them, for preserving some small part of the world... his world.
Carol waited patiently, watching him with interest as he drank it all in. It was often like this, when they first came. After the shock of finding their home decimated, to find it seemingly rebuilt miles below ground was a sensation akin to a violent rebirth. Angel turned his wondering eyes on her.
She smiled. So much like her own boy, now five years dead...
"We captured this complex in '05. The demons had quite an operation going down here, being so close to the Hellmouth, and all... and so close to the ocean?" she grinned conspiratorially at him, "They were no match for us, though..." she said proudly, "And we've expanded it for miles in every direction."
Angel found his strength once again, and they resumed their walk.
He was getting a headache from the lights, the noise and the aromas, on top of his searing hunger and exhaustion. Relief soon found them in the form of their destination, a building with a whitewashed front, and a red cross painted over the door. Upon stepping inside, he knew immediately it was some kind of clinic. Even over the smell of disinfectant came the stench of sickness and blood. He swayed dizzily, and Carol put her arm around him for support.
"This is the hospital." She said, and led him to an entranceway whose door read, Registration Center, "Anyone who wants to enter the city must come here, first." She told him.
The clean white waiting room seemed stained by dozens of other men, all filthy, hopeless and half-dead, like himself. And each one looked as overwhelmed and bewildered as he felt.
Carol led him to the nearest counter, rapping the surface to grab the nurse's attention. He looked up from his clipboard, obviously irritated at the interruption.
"Take a number, please," he droned from rote.
"I'm Carol Blue," she said, "I'm a Spinner. I found this boy on my patrol. He is badly in need of care..." she told the nurse.
He didn't even look up at her again. "Take a number, please," he repeated.
In the blink of an eye, Carol reached out and snatched the clipboard from the man's hand. He finally looked up at her, his face shocked and angry.
If Angel had had any energy... or any feeling at all, for that matter, he would have laughed.
"Look, lady!" the nurse objected loudly, "I don't care who you are! You could be the Dalai Lama, but you still have to take a number!"
And then, Angel would have punched the boy flat in the face for disrespecting his elders.
But there was no need. Carol leaned over the desk and got right into the nurse's face, "You listen to me, young man. I was carrying a rifle and wand on these streets before you could even talk." she spat, "This man is a veteran. He put his life on the line so that you could have your little position of power... so you could keep all of this..." she gestured around the room with the stolen clipboard, "You will find him a doctor, immediately, or I will take this to your smart mouth!"
Angel chuckled in spite of himself. Carol Blue was obviously not in need of a champion.
The nurse continued to glare at her, his mouth opening and closing angrily.
"Is there a problem here?" came a voice from behind them.
The nurse got up, looking relieved. "Dr. Harris, this woman just barged in here and demanded treatment for this man. She won't get in line, and she won't take a number!"
"He is a veteran!" Carol shouted at the newcomer, "Can't you see he is ill? Look how malnourished he is, and pale!" She waved her hand at Angel frantically, her voice desperate, "He's only just been released from prison, and we can't just leave him out here to die!"
"No one is going to die, Mrs. Blue." the doctor said patiently, and placed a gentle hand on Angel arm, "What's your name, soldier?" she asked softly.
Something about her voice... there was something about her that tugged at his awareness and wouldn't let it go. He slowly looked up.
Her hair was an even deeper red than he remembered, but now streaked with shining strands of silver. She wore her trademark patient, sweet smile, but it seemed ironically punctuated by her tired eyes.
"Willow?" he said, flabbergasted.
Her hand dropped from his arm and her mouth scrunched into a shocked little "o". Angel grabbed her in a crushing embrace, and began sobbing hysterically into her shoulder, crying, "I can't believe it's you! Oh, god, I can't believe you're alive!" over and over.
"Angel?" Willow whispered, and slowly wrapped her arms around him. He was so thin, and weak...
In a moment, she was crying too, oblivious to the surprised stares of Carol and the nurse.
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