Disclaimer: I own nothing, Joss does.

Angels Weep

1860

He sank his teeth into the soft, pale flesh of her neck.

She was beyond the point of crying out in pain.

She stopped screaming hours ago.

She lay beneath him…broken…more completely than any creature he'd ever touched.

Her mind shattered, her thighs drenched in her virgin blood.

It was time, time for life to end, and true torment to begin.

He drained her to her last breath before sinking those same teeth into his own flesh. He lifted her into his arms.

His doll.

His sweet child.

He pressed his bleeding wrist to her lips and let the blood flow back into her. She tried to turn away at first – before the hunger found her. When it came, she wrapped his arm in an iron grip and sucked at his wound like a babe at its mother's breast.

She released his arm when the blood took hold.

She screamed…one piercing cry that echoed in the chapel hall.

Then silence.

He laid her corpse down on the cold stone floor.

Once cruel fingers traced the finely sculpted lines of her face, gently, a lover's touch – a father's.

He caressed her ebony curls.

He traced the curve of her breast.

He smoothed her torn skirts down her thighs.

He will bury her in the earth.

He will see her reborn.

They will be together forever.

And she will always be his.

He looked up at the sound of Darla's footsteps. She'd left him alone to play – such a thoughtful woman.

"You really did it?" Darla's voice held a note of contempt. "You made that lunatic one of us."

"I did," he replied.

"Why?" she asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

"She's a work of art, a masterpiece. I will never create her like again."

Darla sighed in resignation. If this was what her boy wanted…, "We'll need to hurry if we're to bury her before sunrise."

"Yes."

Angelus carried the body out into the graveyard and made short work of a shallow grave. He placed her lovingly into the hole and covered her with the soft earth.

Tomorrow night, when the sun sets, she will return to him.

His saint will rise again from this hallowed ground.

And the angels themselves will weep.