THE UNION OF SOULS
"No. No way," Buffy cried, leaping up from her seat nestled against Angel's warm body. "Find another way..."
She stared at Wesley, hard and long, daring him to defy her. Daring him to tell her that for the second time in as many days, someone she loved had to die.
Wesley frowned. "There is no other way. It's prophesized right here..." he replied, gesturing to the scroll.
That got her. That really got her. Anger bubbled up out of her system and she exploded like a keg of C-4 on a trip release. BAM! "Damn you and your scrolls," she screamed, stalking up to her ex-watcher and grabbing him by the lapels of his coat. The scroll fluttered to the floor. "I'm not doing this again! Find another way right now, or you'll regret you ever came back!"
Wesley's eyes were wide with shock, face stricken, but he said nothing.
There was a warm hand on her back, another gripping her shoulder. "Buffy..." Angel's whisper was soft, commanding, and soothing as it drifted across the warm flesh of her ears and the back of her neck.
At the touch, she started to tremble. "I'm sorry," she whispered towards Wesley as Angel guided her away.
The second Angel had ushered her upstairs and into her bedroom and closed the door behind them, she started to sob. Tears came pouring down her face like April rain, drenching her cheeks as he held her, saying nothing. She burrowed into the warmth of his chest, listened to the soothing beat of his heart.
"I can't do this again... I can't do this again... I just started thinking I could and I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't..." she moaned, clutching at his black cotton shirt as if she expected him to blow away into dust at any moment.
His arms wrapped tighter around her, and he rocked her. Back and forth. Back and forth. Silent and yet so expressive, in his own, Angel way.
"Angel, you can't go... You can't go. We'll have to fight the Mohras... They can't be infinite in numbers..."
"Buffy," Angel sighed, "You know that we can't do that. You know it. Even if their numbers aren't infinite, what are you going to do the third time that portal opens and there are a thousand of them. What are you going to do?"
She blinked, the feeling of dread welling up inside her. Utter despair. Tell me I need to kill my sister. "Then I'm going with you. Not Spike."
"Buffy, they'll need your help with the Mohras. You're a better fighter than Spike -- the only ones in the entire group who can engage in combat to any deadly extent are Gunn, Wesley, and Giles. Even Wesley's not a sure bet, though. He's a crack shot, but in hand-to-hand he's weaker."
"I don't care," she whispered, surprised that she was even saying it. She did care. She more than cared. Leaving Willow, Cordelia, Xander, Anya, and Fred to do all the heavy fighting in her place simply wouldn't work. It wouldn't.
She started crying again.
"Hey," he whispered, kissing the top of her head with a soft brush of his lips. "Hell spit me out once. Who's to say I taste any better this time..."
She sobbed into his chest.
She couldn't do this again. She couldn't. She couldn't, she couldn't, she couldn't. "There's gotta be another way," she protested weakly to his comforting embrace.
"Even if there was, Buffy, what are the odds we'd find it in the next thirty minutes before we have to leave and stake out the battle site?"
Always the voice of reason.
Damn him.
Damn him.
Damn him.
She shoved her fist partway into her mouth and bit down hard, a sob flowing from her lips like blood. She hadn't meant it. She really hadn't...
He pulled her hand away from her mouth, gently, the touch of silk, and she stared up at him. "Don't do that," he said.
She whimpered. "Angel..."
She felt cold inside. Cold, and dead, and alone...
Tell me I have to kill my sister...
"I want to go. Instead of you..." she whispered.
"No."
"Please?"
"No, Buffy. You're barely twenty. I'm 247. 273 if you count before I was turned."
"What's that got to do with anything? In human years, you're twenty-six," she protested, but she knew it was a terrible argument. "You're only twenty-six..."
Angel would win. For the first time, Angel would win. She knew already that he would win, and she felt her heart breaking. Shattering apart. Tumbling down through the gaps in her insides.
She started to shiver.
"Buffy, I don't want to die, I really don't. But I'm ready. I've been ready for a long time," Angel whispered.
She bit her lip as she turned and stroked his cheek, feeling the pain in her chest even more. Growing, biting, clutching at her heart.
"It may not have been real, but I still remember everything. I'm ready, Buffy. Don't make this harder." His voice cracked at the end. Cracked, and broke. She knew, then, that he was lying. He wasn't ready at all.
"Noble bastard," she cried, a sob hitching in her throat as she collapsed into him again.
Then she felt it.
He started to tremble.
A small drop of wetness fell onto the back of her neck, searing as it slid down the slope of her spine. She reached up and brushed his cheek, her hand coming back damp, sparkling in the dim light.
"Angel," she whimpered, running her hands up under his shirt. Silk. Warm, and heaving. Weak against her. Warm. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Beating against her ear like the drumming of a tympani. That sound was her heaven. "Please..."
"We can't," Angel moaned, sighing into her hair. "Not now..."
Collapse. Collapsing into her. Tumbling down. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Blinking, she peered at him, almost melting under his ragged, crushing gaze. "Angel?"
"What."
She clutched at his shoulders, denting her nails into his skin roughly. "Shut up."
And then she fell into him, capturing his lips in a desperate, frantic display of lust. She sucked at his lower lip, his upper... Plunged her tongue into his inviting mouth...
He moaned against her, a soft whimper that stood on the razor line between pleasure and pain, threatening to tumble into either one with the slightest jostle. Teetering. Tottering... He couldn't have refused her even if he'd wanted to.
She grabbed him and plunged into pleasure, toppling onto the bed with him in tow. "Buffy..." he whispered as she grappled with his shirt, lifting it up over his head.
His chest was an array of heaving, sculpted muscles. More so, even, than she remembered it. She ran her nails up along the curves of his rippling abdominals, up to his chest... Back down, circling around his navel, and then trailing lower.
Sweat.
Heat.
Soap. Inhaling. He smelled like Ivory soap...
His crushing grip pulled her to him as if he were trying to pull her into himself, into his skin, make her a part of him. "Buffy..." Lips. His lips were all across the back of her neck, her ears, face...
His voice was strangled, riddled with desire as his large hands slid under her shirt. Unclasped her bra. Free. And then her shirt was off, her lacy bra slipping uselessly from her shoulders. Without so much as a glance, he grabbed it and flung it to the side.
Teeth, lips, trailing down her front. "Touch me..." she pleaded as she arched into him, her teeth threatening to start chattering as he moved lower, and lower.
Devastating warmth blanketed her body.
God, he was so warm. So warm and so gorgeous. So hers...
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Same, steady beat, except faster now. Racing some race that couldn't be won...
He ground up against her and she clutched frantically at his shoulders. His hair. Anything that would keep her afloat as the world began tumbling down around her in mindless abandon.
She fumbled with his belt, the buckle echoing with the sounds of their frenzied breathing. He writhed on top of her, and his pants slid down. Followed by his black silk boxers. Thud. He kicked them away from his feet and they fell limply to the floor.
The world seemed to blur. Primal desperation.
Her panties were gone...
Fire, across her skin. His lips screamed down her flesh.
Hands.
Nipping. Sucking. Teasing.
Dizzy.
She cried out as he entered her, a tiny whimper that broke the desperate, heaving silence. Warm, inviting. He slid in and out of her, caressing her from the inside. Her hands felt his muscles ripple as he undulated on top of her.
Falling, falling, falling, she was falling... "Catch me..."
He savaged her with his roaming hands, licked her soul clean with his kisses. "Buffy, Buffy, Buffy..." he grunted, his tone getting more and more and more and more...
He clung to her, clung desperately.
He was falling, too.
Falling into her.
Her arms snaked around his thin waist and yanked him down roughly. Into her. "Please, Angel..."
He became a slave to his own desire, switching from smooth, altering speeds, to a desperate, steady pistoning. Sweat sheen formed across his glistening skin. Whimpering into him, she begged again, felt the clench of her abdominal muscles, tightening in anticipation.
The silence exploded around them in coupled release. He spilled into her, jerking and lost in passionate oblivion. She clawed frantically at him as everything unclenched at once, sending her into the throes of dizzying abandon. She clawed desperately at him.
The last time. The last time.
This was the last time.
He sucked in air like he was drowning in it as he collapsed on top of her, and they lay there, panting, silent. He rolled off of her body when he had regained enough of his senses, but his arms stayed wrapped around her. Possessive. Tight.
"God, I love you, Angel..." she whispered into his heaving chest, his heat still flowing across his skin. She stared at him in the gleaming light. Naked. A god. His eyes drank her in and she crumbled there.
"I love you," he responded, his voice heavy and laden with angst.
The last time.
"Please, let me go instead," she whispered, one last try at the impossible.
"No." That snapped him out of the peaceful, resigned mood.
He stood, releasing her. She felt crushed in the sudden lack of his warm touch, and in the silence. His soft, even breaths rent the air, but nothing else. Nothing but the distant mumbles of the crowd downstairs.
"Angel..."
The muscles of his naked body rippled in the moonlight as he bent down to collect his clothes. On went the boxers, the pants, the rumpled shirt. "We need to go back downstairs. They'll need to start preparing soon." "But..."
He was already walking down the stairs. Anger flashed through her again. Bitter, cold, anger. She realized then, though, that perhaps he had been pushed too far, too soon.
Too soon.
He had just barely become used to the idea of being human, and now he had to become used to the idea that he was going back to Hell voluntarily. And then she had just made an even bigger mess of things. So many complications... She wiped the tears away from her face and threw her clothes back on. She bounded off after him.
Wesley was distributing weapons.
"Remember," Giles said, "You kill the Mohras by smashing the jewels on their forehead. We will engage them while Angel and Spike enter the Hell portal. All of them must be destroyed, but not before the portal closes."
"So," Spike asked, "What are we supposed to do, just keep walking until we find a big bleedin' statue? Seems like a bad plan... And what's the deal with Abaddon, anyway?"
"Abaddon?" Buffy whispered.
Giles turned to her. "Abaddon, the Destroyer. Lord of the Abyss. The prophecy says that the soul must commit to the arms of Abaddon for refuge."
Buffy swallowed and turned to Angel.
He was back with the mask, not revealing any particular emotion. Dawn sat next to him and lay her head on his shoulder. He glanced down at her and gave her a weak smile. But that was all. His eyes were cold, no angst clawing out from his eyes like crows feet. Nothing. He was preparing himself.
He didn't even meet her worried gaze, even as she felt the, now, phantom heat, racing across her skin again. Heaving... Sighing. Powerful.
Desperation.
Touch me...
"All right," Wesley commanded softly. "We should probably head for the site where Glory was defeated now..."
Buffy broke herself from her daze, shaking her head a little.
Angel stood, along with the rest of the crew except Fred and Dawn. He donned his long, black leather coat, and collected his claymore.
He was the first out the door.