Characters: Angel
Pairing: Slight Bangel
Time: Post-Becoming Part 2
Warnings: Torture, but nothing too graphic
Additional Notes: Here's an accompanying Angel one-shot for "Going Nowhere". Though I still prefer "Going Nowhere", I do like this piece. I've got one more post-Becoming one-shot coming, focusing on the Scoobies. As for the title, thank you "Paradise Lost" by Hollywood Undead. It took me forever to come up with a title and while I was thinking, I was listening to the song and then BAM! A title!
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns them, not me.
Let Me Burn
"Close your eyes."
He really needed to stop listening to women when they told him to close his eyes. The first time he'd lost his life. The second time he went to Hell.
(-+-+-)
His arrival was heralded with fire. The flames rose up all around him, licking his skin right off. His eyes collapsed into gooey messes from the massive amounts of heat. His muscles went next, bubbling and burning like barbeque. He was still conscious – shouldn't he be dust now? – as the fire scorched his bones. This was the end.
Except… it wasn't the end.
His body was reconstructed and then the fire began to eat him again and again.
(-+-+-)
It didn't take long for him to remember why he was here and why he wasn't dust. It was a simple answer: he was in Hell and thus he'd be suffering for eternity.
He knew he deserved it. For everyone he'd killed, for everyone he'd tortured, for everyone he'd left sobbing for their loved ones. He deserved burning in Hell for his crimes and so he wasn't bitter about it.
To save the world, Buffy had sent him to Hell, right where he belonged. He wouldn't hold a grudge against her for it.
(-+-+-)
This time, after the fire had eaten him, he reappeared in a graveyard. He stared around him, curiously awaiting the next terror, before his eyes fixated on Buffy.
Buffy? What was she doing here? Had she died?
No, she wouldn't be in Hell when she died. She'd be in Heaven.
…Then maybe he was alive.
He didn't know why or how. He certainly didn't deserve to be alive and back in Sunnydale.
Buffy turned to him and smiled radiantly. He certainly didn't deserve to be smiled at like that.
His lips curved up at the sight of her smile despite his guilty feelings. She ran to him and her happiness took hold of him. They met halfway in a tight embrace. Her lips found his.
Suddenly his body was no longer under his control. He drew away from her lips, trailing small kisses down to her neck. Pausing for only a moment, his fangs slid out and he bit down. She stiffened against him and tried to push away, but he held tight. He drank deeply, feeling revolted but unable to draw away.
Then when he was done, he watched her body fall limply to the ground. The tears had barely gathered in his eyes before the scene flickered out of existence and he was back to the hellfire.
He relished the return of the flames this time.
(-+-+-)
Through the excruciating pain, he found time to dwell on Angelus' most recent actions. He thought about the many victims whose lives he'd taken, but most of all, he thought about Buffy and everything he'd done to her.
He'd mocked their love. He'd haunted her. He'd tried breaking her. He'd considered doing so many horrible things to her, things which he'd never gotten to do because she was strong.
His only consolation now was that she was safe with her friends and family.
(-+-+-)
The red-scaled demon smirked at him, waving a curved blade through the air. "Remember this one? You used it on that Irish maiden. Told her the cuts it left were so thin that she'd stay awake the entire time." It laughed.
He couldn't move against his restraints though he tried. His attempts to inch away from the blade only made his torturer laugh harder.
The knife slid into his flesh as the demon carved a curvy line on his back. He knew what the demon was drawing upon him; it was the same thing he'd carved on the girl's back.
A bird with tattered wings.
The only difference, the demon told him, was that hers had been a dove while his would be a crow.
(-+-+-)
He had no name now. He had no identity or anything to call his own. His memories had long ago faded away, buried under so much pain.
The one thing that he did know was pain. He knew the burn of the fire, the lash of the whip, and the agony of the knife drawn across his skin. He knew that he'd never get respite or break, that they would keep hurting him for eternity.
Once upon a time, he'd thought he'd deserved it. Now all he could think about was how damn painful it was and how much he wanted out.
(-+-+-)
The pain was gone. For a moment, he lay there, panting heavily. He expected more pain to befall him soon. This was a new game of theirs, to give him a brief break and then triple the agony. However, minutes passed and nothing came.
Cautiously, his eyes cracked open to behold a new world.