Author's Note: I could've done some serious Kafka-esque delayed gratification with this chapter and ignored the "What happened to Angel?" question, but I'm not cruel enough, so this one's mostly Angel's POV. As usual, reviews are welcome.
7. The Truth
He wished he hadn't seen it. Or at least, he wished that he couldn't remember seeing it. But there was no escaping the mental image of that tortured facial expression, and it haunted him the way any memory of his past sins haunted him.
The difference was that, unlike other cases in which he'd harmed people, he had not caused Buffy Summers any physical pain and had not set out to hurt her – on the contrary, he had done what he did in order to protect her. And yet, her expression had been the same one he'd seen on many of his past victims.
Angel knew Spike, Darla and Drusilla almost as well as he knew himself, and there were two things that he was absolutely sure of. First: if he hadn't convinced them when they found him in his cell that he had lost his soul and become Angelus, they would have locked the door and left him for dead. They might not have been willing to kill him, but they wouldn't have bothered saving him either.
And second: if he had given any indication whatsoever that he had previously met Buffy, they would have expected him to at least attempt to kill her right there on the spot. His feigned indifference had set the tone for Darla and Drusilla's equally disinterested attitude regarding the Slayer and ensured that Spike was the one who was expected to attack her.
But no matter how well-founded and logical his reasons for posing as Angelus were, they couldn't allay the guilt that gnawed at him every time the memory of her expression returned. The one she had worn when he looked at her and failed to show any signs of recognition had been bad enough, with her eyes going wide with shock. But it was nothing compared to how she'd looked at him while Darla was doing her little display of affection (which he knew had been purely an act of marking her territory, rather than anything to do with love).
The hurt, the confusion, the futile attempt to hide it behind a mask of stoicism had all been too much for him and he had focused completely on Darla in order to avoid seeing the pain temporarily etched on her young features. I'm sorry. He wanted to make it up to her. He would make it up to her. But he wasn't sure if anything he could do would enable her to ever really trust him again – or forgive him.
---
"So, where to?" Spike spread his arms expansively, as though trying to include all of Los Angeles in his reach. "Not sure we'd be able to find any nuns in this place," he turned to smirk at Angel, "but we can probably snag a few virgins if we look hard enough for 'em. What do you say?"
"I want to hear them sing before they die," Drusilla said dreamily. "See how high their voices go before they snap like twigs."
Darla laughed indulgently and nestled underneath the arm Angel had thrown around her shoulders. "Yes. It's not as though anyone would hear them anyway, in a city so laced with despair. It reminds me so much of Paris before the revolution. Remember, darling boy?"
Angel forced himself to smile the way Angelus would – a cruel, mirthless smile so unlike his own fleeting-yet-sincere one. "Of course. You were going through that phase where you had a thing for guards."
"Oh, yes. And you were insanely jealous. You waited until I'd drained the last one to punish me." She looked up at him and lowered her voice to a husky undertone. "It took you, oh, two or three days at least."
The reaction Angel experienced to her advances wasn't it they used to be, although they it was still strong enough to unsettle him. In the past, he and Darla had belonged to each other, totally and unquestionably, and giving each other pleasure had been what they did both did best. But now he found the idea of making love to her – if that term could even be applied to what they did – distasteful and somehow beneath him.
"Good times," he replied vaguely. "We should do that again soon."
The silence that greeted this statement made him look around sharply, and he realized that all three of his vampire companions were giving him the same odd look. He was about to ask what they were staring at, but then he realized: he had spoken in an American accent.
And just like that, the mask of Angelus slipped from his face and they saw him for what he truly was.
"It's the monster," Drusilla hissed. "The Angel-beast. He was pretending to be Daddy."
"I've got to say, you did a brilliant job there. Had me fooled." Spike looked across casually at Darla. "It's got to be worse for you, though. Not being able to spot your old lover from his alter ego an' all. Wouldn't surprise me if you wanted to kill him."
Darla's initial expression of horror had settled into one of scornful disdain. "No," she said, in a tone loaded with disgust. "Death would be mercy to a thing like him. Living with that dirty little soul will be punishment enough for his deception."
It was a calmer version of her reaction to his newly acquired soul in 1898, but back then Angel had thought that he needed her, and her abandonment had hurt him. This time, he knew that if there was anyone he needed, it wasn't her. He didn't feel much of anything as she spoke, except perhaps relief that he would not have to fight her. He wasn't quite detached enough for that, not yet.
Angel didn't bother trying to speak to them. He only stood there for a moment, absorbing Drusilla's abhorrent glare, Spike's gleeful hate-riddled smirk and Darla's coldly dismissive look. Then he turned and walked away.
---
It wasn't that she minded the company. She didn't. She would much rather be out doing the whole hunting-vampires-by-night thing with someone else than by herself, if she was perfectly honest. But she was on a mission, and other people just didn't fit in to that particular mission.
She had tried to explain all this to Fred as firmly as possible when the girl had asked to join her as she was leaving headquarters that night. Eventually Buffy had managed to dissuade her from the plan and slipped away on her own before Gunn or any of the others got the chance to try to stop her.
She wasn't sure of where she was headed. She just knew that she needed to find Angel, even if it was only to see him one last time before doing … what she would have to do, if he really was evil. She was no longer holding out any hope that he had been pretending, but maybe there would be a way to save him once she found him. I've never heard of un-vampire-izing anyone – but then again, here I am, running around trying to get de-Slayered, so maybe anything is possible.
After about an hour of making her way along various streets and alleys – some heavily crowded, some eerily silent and empty – she became aware that she'd been hearing the same sound for quite a while. It was the faint and yet utterly distinctive sound of footsteps. And they weren't hers.
She knew better than to turn around instantly and instead slipped into a convenient narrow side-street. The owner of the footsteps followed at a safe distance. Buffy carefully slipped her stake out of her pocket and felt for the reassuring weight of the sheathed dagger attached to her belt ("Dramatic, but definitely useful," Gunn had told her when he'd handed it to her out of the crew's extensive weapon collection).
She started running and heard with satisfaction that the footsteps sped up to match her pace. She put on a burst of speed, sprinted for a few seconds and then came to a complete and sudden halt. She felt someone's body collide with her back and she reached behind her to grasp their arm, using their own momentum to throw them onto the ground in front of her.
---
An extremely winded Englishman glared at up at her from his undignified position on the pavement. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Actually, that's my line." Buffy returned Ripper's glare with equal force. "Stalking is illegal in all fifty states, not to mention a really sad thing to try to pull on someone like me. Hello, Slayer senses?"
"Oh." Ripper picked himself up and dusted off his denim jeans. "Right. Didn't mention that when you came to visit though, did you? Had to find out from that pompous arse of a Watcher."
"You talked to Wesley?" Buffy raised her eyebrows in disbelief. Ripper didn't look any less disreputable than he had in Sunnydale, and she couldn't imagine him having a civilized conversation with the uptight (and probably evil) Watcher, of all people.
"He called me a few hours ago. Said he was missing a Slayer." Ripper eyed her in faint amusement. "Didn't believe him when he said it was you."
"'Missing a Slayer'? In case you hadn't noticed, I don't have 'Property of the Watchers' Council' stamped on my behind. So don't get any ideas about trying to force me back there," she told him angrily, "or I will get with the pain-causing."
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," he assured her, grinning. Fiery little thing, this one. "I'm only here to pick up my Gem."
"That thing you gave Angel?"
"It's with that git Wesley now. Says he'll return it to me if I help him catch you." He saw the way her fists clenched and smiled. "No worries, darling – I've got a fire spell and a broadsword that says he'll return it to me whether he wants to or not. I've never really gone in for kidnapping."
Buffy's fists unclenched gradually, but the look she gave him was still suspicious. "So if you weren't trying to bring me in for the Council, why were you following me?"
He shrugged. "Thought maybe I could convince you to go back – it'd make picking up my Gem a lot easier. But I'm not about to try and force you. I'm not stupid enough, for one." He smiled again and Buffy relaxed a little.
"So, what do you want with a tracking device anyways?" she asked, curiously.
Ripper raised an eyebrow. "A what?"
"You know," Buffy prompted. "For finding a de-Slay–" she stopped when she saw the genuinely confused expression on his face. He doesn't know what I'm talking about.
"Maybe you've got it mixed up with something else, darling. The Gem of Amarra doesn't track anything. It renders any vampire who wears it practically invincible. Protects 'em from staking, decapitation, fire – even sunlight. That's why it's so valuable."
Buffy's face had paled. "What? No. No, he said… And he wasn't a…" All along? He was a vampire all along? And I thought he wanted to help me, I really thought he … she was ashamed to admit it to herself, but she forced herself to finish the thought: I really thought he cared about me.
Ripper was looking at her very carefully. "Ah," he said softly. "So your boyfriend decided to keep up his little pretence, did he?"
"He wasn't my boyfriend," she spat. "And if you knew he was pretending to be human, you didn't exactly go out of your way to let me in on the secret."
Ripper shrugged. "Wasn't my problem," he said honestly. "I did actually think about telling you, but Angel – or Angelus, as the case may be – has a great talent for making threats."
Buffy was shocked. "He threatened you?" Of course he did. Hello, vampire? Evil creature of the night? When am I going to get the picture?
The warlock had to work hard at controlling his facial muscles to stop a grin from happening. This was turning out to be far too easy.
"He's in the habit of it, I'm afraid. Not that I'd mind," he added casually, "except he tends to make good on them."
Buffy mentally rewound the last few minutes' conversation, trying to absorb it all, when something struck her. "What was that name you called him? Angelus?"
This time, the warlock was unable to keep himself from grinning. "I was wondering when you'd ask about that."
And so he told her. He told her everything, very honestly, very accurately and in great detail – up until the part where Angel's soul was restored. Ripper conveniently decided to skip that part of the story, making it sound as though the gypsy clan had merely tried to kill him instead, and been slaughtered in the attempt.
By the time he had finished talking, Buffy had let go of any ideas about saving Angel. She was done with him.
As far as she was concerned, he was just another vampire taking up space where a pile of dust should be.
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