Title: Abyss Part One
Rating: R
Characters: Gunn (for now)
Timeline: Post-Not Fade Away. Assumes Gunn is the sole survivor of the alley.
Disclaimer: Characters/Concepts are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, et al.
Prologue - This Wicked Schism
Gunn's never been stupid. Even before his brain got an upgrade. Educated, well, that's a different story. But he spent four years with Wes, three with Fred, and now he's got the accumulated knowledge of more than a few Wolfram and Hart lawyers floating around in his head.
He knows things like abstract metaphor now. Choice bits of philosophy.
The abyss is looking back at him, and it ain't no metaphor.
"The fight wasn't meant for mortals," the Priestess tells Gunn.
He scowls at her, sighs at the same time, mutters, "Yeah, yeah. Heard that before."
Six times, to be exact.
Opal shimmered gaze moves from the entrails of a dead goat, zeros in on Gunn. "You shouldn't have lived."
He's heard that before, too. Gestures at his right leg, twisted and disjointed, at his face, scarred and tight, with a hand that refuses to bend anymore. "This ain't living."
Points with his good hand across the room into a dark corner, where the air is like it is on hot highways. Visible. Warped. Dense. Shaped like something that Gunn can only vaguely call wrong. Glowing black eyes, full of bad, sick, horrible things.
"And I don't know what that is, but I doubt it's living either."
The Oeben Priestess smiles at him, rows and rows of sharp, pointed teeth, pale pink skin crinkling at the corners of her lips. "There are clouds and barriers; only bits and pieces make their way through. Tell me, what do you see when you look in its eyes?"
Gunn stares at her. There's a drop of sweat that slides down his back and the muscles seize in his neck. "Atrocities," he says evenly. "All of them."
"And how do you get rid of those? All of those?"
He closes his eyes, inhales through his nose. Feels his muscles unclench, because despondency takes everything, makes a body gelatinous.
"You know what it is," the Priestess says. Smoothes her feathered hair back, taps her finger against a sliver of metal hanging suspended in mid-air. "You can't make it leave."
The door opens and there's a small girl, Priestess in training, bowing at Gunn. Bowing at the collection of atrocities in the corner.
"Can you help me at all?"
"There is no helping you," the Priestess says, already walking away.
Chapter One - Return to the Titan
Two more attempts after the Oeben Priestess, and Gunn gave up. He tried, he failed, and it was time to figure out where the hell to go from there.
That was five months ago, and he still hasn't figured it out. Spent some time cleaning up the last of the apocalypse him and the others let loose on L.A., but that didn't take long. Most of the clean up was done by other people while Gunn was still in rehab to get over the injuries he got in the alley.
Lives in a dive motel that's just a step up from squatting. Walks the streets at night, the Atrocities in his wake, takes out vamps here and there, but it's small time stuff, and about the only thing he's figured out is that he's got to be involved in the big time stuff now. Feels it in his bones when he thinks about it. Knows there are plenty out there, like his old crew, who take on the daily grind.
There isn't any big stuff going on, though. Without the Circle of the Black Thorns the other side seems to be chasing its own tail. In-fighting for standing, sabotaging of rivals' plans. They're a joke right about now in the underground.
The days blend into nights, blend into days, and his life is patchwork of sunrises and sunsets that are disconnected from each other and him. The only constant is the viscous air that's forever just a few feet from him.
Still, there's no forgetting the date, and a year to the day after he helped put Angel's fool ass plan into motion, he's at a graveyard on the edge of the city.
Their graves are all in a row, Doyle, Cordy, Wes and Fred. Angel and Spike's ashes were washed away in the rain almost immediately, but Gunn got them a headstone in the plot right next to Wes'. Gunn and Lorne's empty plots are at the end, and Gunn wonders where Lorne is, if Lorne is.
Angel was a practical, morbid bastard, Gunn's gotta give him that. Bought the plots and headstones a while back. Paid for the funerals, too. All Gunn had to do was show up, and he couldn't even do that.
Fred and Wes' families came to see him the day of the funerals, and Gunn squeezed his morphine drip and coasted through the visit without really being there.
First time he came here, he was four hours out of the hospital and had broken five restrictions that were for his own good. Right about then, Gunn was damn well hoping he'd fall over dead and take that thing with him. Didn't happen though, so here he is again.
One year to the day. Moving better, but not good as new. Thing still with him. No plan for the life that shouldn't have been spared. Standing in front of a row of headstones and wondering if it was just a fuck up that he's still here.
Hears a noise. Shifts awkwardly, the bundle of Atrocities shifting along with him, right in front of him. Gunn squints against the bright sunlight, focuses through the wavy air.
Faren demon, Gunn realizes when he sees the navy blue skin, dark gray eyes, and the spikes on the woman's arms. Dressed in a business suit with sleeves altered to accommodate the spikes, carrying a manila folder.
Gunn nods when the Faren walks up to him. Ignores the outstretched blue hand, watches the toothy smooth smile fade away as she sees Gunn's bland face.
"You're Charles Gunn," she says, her voice without any recognizable accent. "I'm Aileen ict Hept."
Ict, Faren dialectal notation of "daughter of", and calling her Aileen is an insult, since Faren's refer to themselves in their full, formal names. Gunn takes a second to curse his abundance of useless knowledge, which hasn't yet helped him with the important thing that is now shimmering at his left, unnoticed by Aileen ict Hept.
Aileen ict Hept holds out a cream-colored card. Gunn catches sight of small black text as he palms it without reading it.
Sleek, long blue face readjusts into all business lines. "Charles Gunn, I'm an attorney with--"
"Mers ict Banet and Associates," Gunn finishes for her. "Your firm represent demons in tribunals and pan-dimensional matters. Usually pro-bono. Always against the big guns."
She blinks slowly, then nods. "Correct. I've been searching for you for quite a while. Coming here--today--was going to be my last resort."
Gunn arches a brow and straightens up to his full height, just meeting Aileen ict Hept's gray eyes. "Oh?"
"My firm was retained as executors of the estate of the vampire Angel sired by Darla."
Angel sired by Darla. Not: Angel. Sired by Darla. Or even: Angel, sired by Darla. Gunn concentrates a hell of a lot on the penchant of Faren's to transfer their formal references outside of their species, to keep himself from focusing too much on Aileen ict Hept's reason for being here.
"You're a hard man to find, Charles Gunn," she says. "You vacated your premises a year ago and haven't accessed your bank accounts in seven months."
Gunn emptied the accounts, filled with the Wolfram and Hart salary he never had time to spend, an hour after he got out of the hospital. Cash is king and there's no way to trace him electronically.
"--left you the property known as the Hyperion."
Gunn's eyes narrow. "The Hyperion?"
Curt nod. "Yes. A financial trust has been set up to care for the taxes and maintenance for approximately ten years."
The Hyperion, where memories, antsy and irritable after almost two years of neglect, are waiting to pounce on him. To drive him even crazier than the wavy air thing does.
"I don't want it," Gunn says shortly.
And he's watching her, and he sees that she doesn't move, but the manila folder still spins out of her hands and slaps against his chest. His hand comes up automatically to hold it there, and he closes his eyes briefly.
"No," he says loudly.
Tries to take hold of the folder, but it might as well be welded to his chest, for all the luck he has trying to pry it away.
He feels himself start to break at the seams. Takes in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. Gives a tight smile to Aileen ict Hept, whose eyes are wide and slightly alarmed as she shifts her gaze from side to side, trying to figure out what's going on.
Gunn drops his hand to the side and the folder stays there. Levels his gaze on the wavering air. "This your doing?" he asks, and he doesn't expect a response so he's not surprised when he doesn't get even a flicker in the waver.
Walks away from Aileen ict Hept, folder still at his chest, the air wavering to his left, and silently vows not to give in.
A week later, the folder is still there and Gunn knows he has to do something. It won't move, the Atrocities seem to be mocking him with bouncy wavering and he can't take his damned shirt off so he can't shower right. He's getting a little rank and yesterday his shirt started to smell like mildew; the folder is still in pristine condition.
He puts out word that he needs a seer, gets a few leads and one of them is Lorne. Gunn sits on the bed in his dank motel room, relieved that someone else made it out alive that night, sucked dry because Lorne finally had enough and took his leave. It's a terrible thing, Lorne getting broken by this, but everyone of them got broken at some point or another, more than once, and there aren't usually exceptions.
He wonders if he should go to Lorne or one of the other names he got from his contact. Doesn't know that he's made a decision until one of his late night limp fests brings him to a dive bar in the sewers underneath Hollywood and Vine. He closes his jacket over the folder and goes inside.
Lorne's working at a booth in the back of the place, leaning forward earnestly to talk to a Fyarl demon. Gunn hopes there's a sanctuary spell in place because he's heard about those mucus attacks and Lorne has one of his beloved suits on.
Waits until the Fyarl stomps off, then watches Lorne, who he can see better now that the Fyarl demon's huge head isn't blocking the light. He looks tired. Old. Drawn tight and thin with no hope of unwinding.
Gunn knows the feeling and he's about to leave when Lorne catches sight of him and freezes with his Seabreeze halfway to his mouth. He shouldn't have come here, but he did, and he might as well talk to Lorne.
Walks over to the booth and Lorne sets his drink down carefully. For once, he doesn't have an endearment-laden slew of words for Gunn, just a turned down mouth and haunted eyes.
"So, what do you want?" Lorne finally asks, voice deeper than usual.
Gunn rubs the back of his neck. "Just want to see how you're doing. Make sure you're all right." Lorne's gaze snaps and crackles and pops, and Gunn sighs, nods. "As all right as you can be. Still not sure what happened..."
"I'll tell you what happened," Lorne hisses. "Angel asked me to do one last thing for him. Gave me a gun that was loaded with bullets that had Lindsey's name all over them."
Son of a bitch. Gunn never even considered that, not even when he found out that Lindsey was shot full of holes and died that night. It's not hard believing that Angel asked Lorne to do it. But, Lorne agreeing to do it?
"Why'd you pull the trigger?"
"Because it was part of Angel's plan." Bitterness falls off the words, hangs in the air. "Take Lindsey out of the picture because who knows what he would have done after Angel died." Picks up his drink and toasts Gunn. "Cheers."
And Gunn's had a few things brought home to him in the past few years. Leans back and looks down at Lorne. "You made the choice, Lorne."
He's talking about a few choices: taking the Wolfram and Hart deal, agreeing to the plan in Angel's office when everything was cloaked, pulling the trigger.
"Don't give me that. You know none of it was that simple, and if I want to blame Angel--all dust in the wind as he is--so that I can keep on keeping, then you better believe I will."
Gunn figures Angel would be fine with it, but he doesn't think it'll help Lorne in the long run. That's not his business, though, because Lorne can't bear him. Sees it in Lorne's eyes and the tensed muscles that want him to bolt out of the booth and run far away.
"You find me if you ever need anything," Gunn says, standing.
Lorne doesn't respond, just reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a slip of paper. "Jemma. Newly arrived on the continent, and one of the best seers in the world. She's pricey, but I called in a favor and you won't be charged." Hands it to Gunn with one hand, picks up his drink with the other and looks at the table. "I appreciate that you didn't ask me, Gunn. I'd also appreciate it if you'd forget about me."
Gunn nods. "Take care, Lorne."
Jemma takes one look at Gunn two nights later, screams like the hounds of hell are on her ass, starts bleeding from every orifice--of which there are a lot, her being a Kalip demon--and falls into a coma.
Gunn doesn't think that's a good sign of anything and he retreats back to his motel room, the folder still at his chest and his scent getting mildewier and ranker. His head is 'bout ready to crack open from frustration.
He's being jerked around, obviously. Dealing with that kind of thing isn't what he's used to. Not as the primary target anyway. Just a secondary target as a way of taking Angel down.
He resorts to talking to the folder, trying to make it see reason, but gets nothing in return, especially not the folder dropping away. Finally gives in and makes his way to the Hyperion one rainy night that's too damn like the rainy night when Gunn was trampled and crushed while everyone he gave a damn about was killed.
The place is dusty and smells pretty much like Gunn does. He turns on the flashlight he brought with him and casts circles of light around him. Gives it a moment's thought, then shines it right at the Atrocities. It slithers away and he's more than a little glad. He really doesn't want any more knowledge of it than the peripheral knowledge he's currently got. Call him paranoid, but he thinks it might make him batshit insane.
Through the lobby, up the stairs, and to the suites everyone lived in. The beds are stripped down and covered in plastic. The furniture is draped in drop cloths and the personal belongings are all gone. It reminds him of when Angel first brought him, Cordy and Wes here. But not, because Gunn remembers this place when it was...alive. When it was home and family and safety and love and dysfunction, all rolled into one.
The room he shared with Fred for a while makes him hurt somewhere deep inside and he has to leave. The equations are still on the wall from when Fred lost it a bit after finding out about her professor, and they blur in an angry streak in the corner of his eye as he gimps away fast as he can.
He wanders into Angel's suite, then to the one that Wes used whenever he stayed over. And he's good at keeping most of this stuff buried, so he doesn't cry and he doesn't drop to the floor and hyperventilate. But his insides are being twisted around. Tying into knots so tight that he has to brace himself on a hallway wall with one arm and bend over from the pain.
There are flashes behind his eyes. Visions that he's seen skitter and shift in the viscous air of the Atrocities. He can smell burning flesh, hear the screams of millions, feels the unnatural decay of flesh and muscle. No. No fucking way. He straightens up and zeroes his gaze right in front of him where it's hovering. Takes a deep breath and lets it slide from him. Makes the memories and the pain into something small and compact, and shoves them to the back of his head, and the sounds, scents and images fade away.
He's exhausted now. The muscles in his bad leg are starting to cramp and he knows he won't make it back to the motel. So instead he makes his way to the room he took when he and Fred broke up. The sheets are in the armoire and he doesn't bother making the bed. Just rips the plastic off the mattress, drops a sheet on it and follows it down.
Gunn's sleep is bloody and violent. He wakes up covered in sweat, sucking in frantic gulps of air and on the verge of throwing up.
He's not an idiot. He figures the bad memories and thoughts are triggering something from the Atrocities. Maybe letting them find a way into him. He'll be damned if he'll let that happen. All right, so maybe he's already damned
There's a choice, and he understands things now, so he knows that it's more than it seems. He can run back to his motel and push everything down again and hope that nothing triggers it and gives the Atrocities an opening. Or he can stay here and let it all go; take the power away from the memories for good.
Stay or go. But nothing so simple. Stay, remember this is home and never leave again. Go, forget about it all and never come back. It's not even as simple as that, though. He's been slipping and sliding through days and weeks and months. Through an entire fucking year. Doing nothing. And that? That isn't him. Forget the fact that he's gimpy and scarred. Forget the fact that there's some hellish...thing dogging him.
He's been telling himself that he needs a mission--the mission--but he's done shit-all to get back into the game. Right about now, he's not at all sure what'll get him back in. But he knows he can't do it from some pay-by-the-hour motel. That's the real question, buried under the simple ones. The messy truth of the matter. No matter how much he wants and needs it, can he do it? Will he do it?
Thinks about the room down the hall from him, the math on the walls, and hauls his gimpy ass out of bed.
Gunn hoped that the decision itself would be enough to get the damn file off his chest. Well, no. It's still there when he calls Aileen ict Hept, when he makes his bed, and when he does the best he can to get the place feeling a little less deserted--which isn't much when there's no utilities on and his leg is acting up on account of the rain he feels is coming.
It's even there when he drives to Mers ict Banet and he alternates his glare between it and the Atrocities, which is sitting in the passenger seat, wavering in something Gunn thinks might be excitement. That makes him pause for a moment after he parks his truck. If he's doing something that seems like a good idea to his new companion, maybe it's not the right thing.
Except, Gunn can't find another reason not to. Making the decision based on what he imagines in this thing that can't really be seen? Not exactly logical, and logic seems to have been implanted in his synapses. But he keeps the apprehension in mind as he gets out of the truck and goes into the law office. If he's relearned anything over the last year or two it's that he has to keep in mind consequences. He can't forget about them, pretend they don't exist, or whitewash them.
And if he can still go ahead with something when the worst of the consequences is front and center in his head, then he figures that says something about the choice itself. Mainly that it's not the most major fuck-up ever. Charles Gunn: Learns from his Mistakes. That's what should be on his headstone. Maybe he'll have that engraved on the one Angel already arranged.
The receptionist is human and she does a passable job of pretending she doesn't smell Gunn coming long before he gets there. He figures she's used to rank smells from some of the demonic clients. She gives him a pretty smile that's not nearly as wide or white as Cordy's was and then leads him through the small but posh office.
Aileen ict Hept is sitting in a small conference room, dressed in a deep purple colored pants suit that looks pretty good against her dark blue skin and makes her gray eyes look brighter. The hair matches the eyes and the think ropes are tied back with metal clasps.
"Charles Gunn," she greets him, holding out her hand.
"Aileen ict Hept," Gunn returns, taking her hand and being careful to avoid the spikes that start at her wrist. Her hand is almost as big as his. Faren demons are matriarchal and the women are stronger and smarter and larger than the men. Male Farens' brains are about a quarter of the size of the females'. Their bodies are usually about half as wide and tall, too, with barely any muscle mass. More useless knowledge.
He flexes his fingers a bit when Aileen ict Hept releases his hand.
"What may I help you with, Charles Gunn?" Gunn arches a brow and points at the folder and she smiles. "Yes, I figured that. But are you accepting or refusing the Hyperion?"
And he pauses for a moment. Just the smallest moment. It's enough to bring visions of severed limbs flashing through his head, and he sets his jaw.
"Accepting," he tells her, and the manila file folder falls from his chest.
The money Angel left for the Hyperion...well, there's a lot of it. Apparently he wasn't really getting a chance to spend his salary either. Gunn calls Anne at the shelter and the next morning a dozen kids come over to help him out. He buys them lunch and uses the old elevator to go upstairs and check on them. His leg isn't happy with all the walking he's doing, so he sucks it up and brings his cane out. Discovers that slamming it against a wall is a great way to scare the shit out of kids who are macking on each other when they're supposed to be working.
He calls in electricians to do some rewiring so that there are a couple of access panels in the hotel for the hall lights on each floor and the main ones in the lobby. Easier than hobbling along in the dark trying to make his way to switches and shit. The elevator gets an overhaul and Gunn stops worrying about it dropping from its cables and taking him along with it.
It takes a week to get the lower floors all cleaned and sorted and when he sends the kids back to Anne for the last time, a nice chunk money tucked in each of their pockets, he's alone in this overwhelming place that used to be home but is a stranger now. Jemma calls when he's about to dip into the bottle of scotch he found hidden in the back of a drawer in the desk that used to be Wes'.
Her sibilant voice hisses through Gunn's cell phone, making Gunn wince a bit.
"You are marked," she tells him.
"In a few ways. Can you be more specific?"
"You're the only one to walk still; it carries a burden."
God save him from cryptic mystical bullshit. "First of all? Not the only one walking. Second of all? I need details, not vague crap I could have guessed on my own. So, please, help me out here."
Jemma sighs over the receiver. "Lorne guides others to their mission. The mission is not his. But, you--it's been your mission for as long as you can remember. That night, you fought because you believed. You helped tilt a scale and now there is an obligation to uphold."
"Obligation. Being haunted by Atrocities?"
"Is that what you think?" she asks, her voice incredulous. "That it is some curse laid upon you by those you felled?"
Why can't anyone talk normal? And why do they always have to make him sound like a damn fool?
"Look, I barely know what it is, much less why it's dogging me, or what I should do about it, okay? I went to a dozen places to find out and all anyone could tell me was that I couldn't get rid of it, not why is was here or what I was supposed to do."
"It wasn't time to know then."
Gunn remembers the Oeben priestess telling him that not everything was coming through.
"It is not just atrocities, but the ways and means of perpetrating them. It is the culmination of what the Circle of the Black Thorns held and you are its keeper."
And Gunn's not sure if he's surprised by this or not. It does and doesn't make sense, and he wishes Wes was still around to tell him if it's bullshit or not. What he is sure of is that he doesn't want to be its keeper.
"You ask what you should do," Jemma continues. "Keep it from those who want to tilt the scale back. Don't let them regain it."
"How?"
"The same way you've done everything else in your mission. You fight."
Interlude - Five and a Half Minute Hallways
Gunn walks through the Hyperion several hours a night. Sleep comes rarely, in patterns he can't discern. Generally he just lays his ass down wherever he is when he finally gets tired enough to sleep.
The violent dreams start fading away with each set of memories he copes with. From the way Jemma explained it all to him, the thing is pretty benign at the moment. Just kinda...there. Out of the hands of the bad guys. He figures that sooner or later someone is gonna figure it out and come for him, for it. He'd rather it be later, so he doesn't go out looking for more information because that would draw attention to him.
Instead, he goes to the physical therapy appointments he never went to when he should have. Walks and builds up strength in his right leg. His left hand is a lost cause. There's nothing that can be done for it and Gunn's known that since the beginning. The nerve endings are dead and it's easy to forget there's something actually still attached to his wrist.
Aileen ict Hept comes by every few days. She brings coffee and donuts and sometimes they talk law and sometimes she walks with him through the halls, the Atrocities always and ever just a few feet away. Gunn's taken to calling it Herman and he doesn't think it appreciates that. Not even a little. So he does it every chance he gets when he's alone, which is most of the time. And he talks to it, too, because it's better than talking to himself.
He senses he's in a holding pattern, so he holds, and he lets these moments of calm take him over because it's going to end. It's just a matter of when.
End Part 1