This is what my mind does after watching Angel season 5. Fred was my favorite character and I always loved A hole in the world. It's the saddest episode (or one of the sad episodes of Angel) but I always loved it. Though I have to admit while I missed Fred, Illyria was kind of entertaining to watch. This is probably the only fic of Angel I'll ever write.
don't own anything.
There's a moment in everyone's life ( at least she thinks there is ), a single second – a fraction of a second. In which you simply know what's coming next. There's no logic behind it, it's unexplainable, it's a simple feeling, and you simply know. It's like in that moment everything falls into place and starts making sense. There's no reasoning behind it, but it exists. Even if you spend the rest of your life denying it ever happened, that you ever felt it, that you ever knew.
It's a moment in which you know what's coming, but you can't change anything about it, because by the time you realize it's to late.
To her it has only happened twice, or maybe it has happened a hundred times ( it's not like it actually matters ), but she can only remember it happening twice. Both times, in some specific way, are connected to Angel. She doesn't think it really means anything, or maybe it means everything, and it the end it doesn't even matter. It's real in that moment, but in the next it's gone, and by then you're not even that sure anymore.
The first time is in Pylea. He had just saved her from the monsters, and he had simply looked her in the eye, and she knew. She knew that he ( somehow ) would save her, that he would take her home. She had no idea how he was going to do it, didn't even know if it was possible, but she knew he would take her back. She didn't understand how she knew, she simply did. She tried to deny it, because really she didn't want to get her hopes up, she'd been there for so long, she could scarsly remember another world. She didn't want to hope, because really in the end she was almost certain he would leave back to his world and leaver her here, forget she ever existed.
But he didn't, he saved her and brought her back home.
'Handsome man, saved me from the monsters.'
The second time, it's many years later, but it's still the same. She's lying in a hospital bed ( she's not even really sure how she got there), and all her friends are surrounding her. They make a weird group she realizes, like there not really meant to be together. But they are, they're her friends, they're her family. It's in that second, when she looks at Angel and he says 'Not yet', that she simply knows. She knows this is it, the end of the road. That there is nothing they will ever be able to do for her, nothing they can do to save her.
She knows, but she doesn't want to, she wants to live.
She has so much to do, lives to save, apocalypses to stop. She has just started going out with Wesley, and she's still so young. But really there's nothing she can do about it, because she's here and it's almost done. She feels so week, but she refuses to give up, refuses to go down without a fight. She fought for years, she didn't do all of that to simply give up now. There has to be a way out, she knows there is a way out, and if anyone can find it it's Angel.
' I am not – I am not the damsel in distress. I am not some case. I have to work this. I lived in a cave for five years in a world where they killed my kind like cattle. I am not going to be cut down by some killer flu. I am better than that!'
She's strong, she's been taught how to be strong. She can fight this, she can find out what's wrong with her and she can win. She has so much to do, so much to live for, she has to live on. But she has no strength, Wesley has to catch her before she hits the ground. She can't work, but she can't stay either because she's going crazy in this world. If she's going to die ( and she knows she is ), than she wants to die in the place she feels the safest. She wants to die in her own bed, not in a hospital bed.
She doesn't feel like she has much strength left, and in the end she thinks she's used it all up already. She's been fighting for years, ever since she opened that book, and she simply doesn't have enough strength left to fight this. She fought to survive Pylea and then to survive again in this world. She doesn't think she can fight to survive some kind of monster flu.
She's lost anyway.
She holds onto the noise Wesley makes, as long as she can hear it, she's still there. He's still there. She begs him not to leave her, because she so scared of being alone. She doesn't know if they could have ever made it, if they could have ever been happy. Real. But it doesn't really matter anymore, all they'll have are the last couple of months. She's holding on to him, even though she knows she's losing, she's slipping away and she knows it.
She doesn't want to go, and at the same time she does want to go.
There's a part of her, growing by the second, that simply wants to let go. Simply fade away, not exist anymore. Give up, not hurting, simply let go and float away. If she would float away, it wouldn't hurt anymore, there would be no more pain. No need to fight, no need to remember all the horrible things that were Pylea. She doesn't want to admit it, but by the time she's in her apartment, she's almost given up already.
She knows she won't make it regardless, if there was a cure Angel would already have it.
She feels it, the second she's going to leave. She knows she has perhaps a couple of seconds left, and she clings onto Wesley. Saying something about not being afraid, and her parents, but none of it really matters. She can feel the demon crawl it's way into her, and all she can do is hand over her body. She holds onto Wesley hoping in some way that will save her. She's trying to think of something, something to say that he will remember forever.
Famous last words.
But all she can manage, all that comes out of her mouth, is a half-hearted plea to stay. Then it's gone, she floats away, leaves her body and feels no more pain. She hears Wesley's cries and wants to return, but it's late and she can't anymore. She doesn't know what comes next, but she knows she has to be ready for it. All the pain, all the suffering doesn't matter anymore.
She can rest now, she's free.
In stories the princess is always saved by the handsome prince. No matter what it she needs saving from. He always puts her on his horse, and they drive of into the sunset. It always end happily.
'Handsome man saves me from the monsters.'
'That's how it works.'
But in live it's not always like that. Sometimes there's nothing you can do.
Sometimes you just lose.