Chapter 5
Pure as Blood
Summary: Where I left off.....read chapters 1-4 please.
Disclaimer : I don't own them, except for Katherine. And if you steal her, I will send you to Hell, where you can play with Angelus....
Author's Notes: This is my first torture scene. Give me a little credit, I'm not a violent person. If it sucks, I'm sorry. Just don't send flames. They burn up my mailbox.......
Buffy Anne Summers was the Slayer. The Chosen One. Super-human strength, the whole deal.. And yet she was begging for them to stop.
She had expected physical torture. That wasn't as bad as what they were doing now. She almost wished they would return to whipping her. It was bearable. She knew where she was, and more importantly, who she was.
They were cruel. Choosing the most painful events in her life..... and making her relive them. Kinda like sitting in on a movie, a somewhat sane part of her mind whispered. It was, in a sense. She saw herself waking up in Angel's bed, alone and afraid. No, that's over now, she told herself, clinging to the only hope she had left. Angel got his soul back, and he's fine.
A clash of thunder woke a 17 year old Buffy Summers from her peaceful sleep. She turned to where her love was asleep beside her.... and found it empty. She pulled the burgundy sheet around her naked form, suddenly cold.
"Angel?" she whispered, knowing that deep inside, something very bad had happened, and her Angel was gone.....
"That's over now," she told herself, bringing her mind back to the present. Yet the pain was still fresh in her mind. She felt pity for the innocent thing she was back them. That had changed, because Angelus had taught her that one hard lesson she herself could almost pretend that she had never had to learn it.
People could be very cruel.
"Had enough yet, Slayer?" the goblin that had brought her here asked, it's sharp little teeth gleaming in the firelight. Buffy looked around her, becoming disgusted with the room. She was chained to the wall by the chains she had worn since she arrived in Hell, and the smell of sulfur filled her lungs. It looked like the Hell of child's imaginations and cartoons. Fire pits, demons laughing at the screaming victims that they tortured. Buffy sighed, closing her eyes as she prayed that Angel would rescue her.
Angel walked to the next grave, not knowing if he could make it past the last grave. Tears were streaming down his face, and he could barely walk. One more grave , he thought, his sanity grasping to that single thread of hope. He had to face every one from Jenny Calendar to the human Drucilla.
He almost tripped over the last stone. Small, gray, concrete showed as a small sliver about the snow. He knelt down, curious that the last stone was so small and unattended. As he brushed the snow away, a smear of blood stained the pure white. He looked down, and gasped.
His name appeared on the stone, the letters plain, only showing the word,"Angel". As he stared at the writing, the surface became blurred , as a picture filled the space....
" Where have you been?" Buffy asked as he slowly walked down the stairs to his apartment, worry on her face.
"I went to see the Oracles," he said finally, not knowing what else to say. He knew he didn't have a lot of time, and wanted to do so much more...
"What-why?" Buffy stammered, walking toward him. He took a deep breath, knowing there was no other way to say what he had to say. Closing off his heart and soul from the pain that began trying to convince him to go back. One day wasn't enough, his soul screamed as he ignored it.
"Because more than ever how much I love you," he answered, his blind eyes gazing into her now unbelievable ones.
"No. No, you didn't," she said, backing away from him, denial taking over her. Angel wanted to join her in that place, but knew if he did, he would be the cause of her death.
" And if I stayed mortal one of us would wind up dead, maybe both of us," he continued, following her. "You heard what Mohra said," he added, trying to make her understand why he was killing his own soul.
"Mohra is dead. We killed him," she responded, turning her tear filled eyes on him.
"He said others would come," he reminded her, deciding that he wasn't titled to be alive, or undead.
"They always come. And they always will. But that's my problem now, not yours, remember?" she said angrily, reminding him of one of the many reasons he now had the impossible task of walking away from her.
"No. I won't just stand by and let you fight, maybe die, alone," he told her, putting his fears into words in front of them , knowing she would fight to the very end. She always did.
"Then we fight together," she retorted, her mind too far in denial to let the truth sink in. Deep inside she knew Angel was right, but didn't want to let her dreams slide through her fingers for a final time.
"You say what happened last night," he said, forcing the words to come out."If anything I'm a liability to you. You take chances to protect me, and that's not just bad for you, it's bad for the people we were meant to help," he finished, telling her that he no longer could be her savior.
"So what? You took a whole 24 hours to weigh the ups and downs of being a regular Joe and decided it was more fun being a super hero?" she yelled back at him, going into trying to make him anger at himself. Only if she knew with every word she said, he was dyeing a little death...
"You know that's not it, How can we be together if the cost is your life, or the lives of others?"
Angel sunk to his knees, his tears flowing down his cheeks as he watched the scene. The tears of blood dripped to the pure milky snow, staining the crystals to the bright red color. Faint trails of blood marked his cheeks as he reached a hand out to the image, not being able to hold the love of his life.
Buffy watched the mirror the goblin held before her, the truth finally being revealed as tears of remembrance rained down her face, damning Angel to the hell she was now end. As the scene played, and her tears fell, she didn't notice that her tears were blood, that left a stain trail down her pale cheek, dripping to the floor, the same as An gel's. Nether knew that at that moment, the memories where shared, not just remembered by one....
As the truth finally hit Buffy, she let the tears fall as she falls into Angel's loving arms. Sighing, he rest his head on hers, a single tear escaping.
"I know. I couldn't tell you. I wasn't sure-" he stopped, taking a moment to regain control over his emotions." -if I could do it if I woke up with you one more morning." Buffy sniffled, raising her head to look into his eyes.
"I understand," she said slowly." So what happens now?" Angel took a breath as he glanced at the clock. It was close enough. He knew when he went to the Oracles he could only see Buffy in pain for only a short moment...
"The Oracles are giving us back the day, turning back time, so I can kill the Mohra before his blood makes me mortal."
"When?" she asked, hoping that she could make love to him one more time. He looked to the clock.
9:00
"Another minute, " he told her, his arms tightening around her body, the panic finally setting in. Could he make it that long?
" A minute?" Buffy cried, her tears freely flowing like a mountain stream in winter."No. No, it's not enough time!"
"We don't have a choice. It's done," he said, his voice raw with held back emotions. Buffy lifted her pain and grief stricken eyes to him.
"How am I suppose to go on with my life knowing what we had?" she whispered, a sob raking her body."What we could have had?"
"You won't," he told her, offering the only comfort he could." No one will know but me."
"Everything we did...." she said, remembering the heat soaked night they shared.
"It never happened," he said, not just to her, but to himself, knowing that forgetting himself would have to begin now. He felt Buffy shaking her head.
"It did. I know it did!" she exclaimed, placing a hand on his chest."I felt your heart beat."
Their lips meet, starving to get as close as possible, knowing that the single minute can not make up for the lifetime they could have shared together. Buffy pulls back, frantically looking at the clock, their last minute almost up.
"No! Oh god, it's not enough time....." she whispers, as Angel's tears fall onto her hair.
"Shh, please. Please," he begs her, not knowing if he can live with the knowledge that he held her in his arms. He tightened his hold on her as she did him, both wanting to fuse their bodies together, so they wouldn't have to leave each other.
"No,:" Buffy says as the second hand reaches closer to the twelve, knowing that she has only seconds. Angel cried, knowing himself that Buffy was the lucky one. She would never know.
"I'll never forget, I'll never forget I'll never forget," she said to him, both of them knowing that she would as she was ripped away.....
Angel collapsed in the snow, his eyes staring blankly at the image of him holding Buffy in his arms, chanting that she would never forget. I can't do this anymore, he thought to himself, the weight of the world finally breaking his soul. Just as he finished the thought, a stake appeared beside him. he picked it up, a hand running over the smooth wood surface.
"Why not end it?" he said outloud, tossing the stake between his hands."What else is there to lose?"