---
Isolation
---
--- Part Five ---
Buffy pushed open the Hyperion doors, walking cautiously into the empty space within.
The door shut behind her, the slam of it mingling with the clicking of her heels on the floor. Immediately the busy, morning sounds of traffic muffled to nothing, and the silence of the empty place flowed over her.
It was disconcerting, enough to keep her awake since she'd gotten the call. Fred had been insistent, on the phone, but wouldn't tell her why. It was almost as if she didn't trust Buffy to believe her, or understand her properly. And she spoke quietly, somewhat vaguely, as if she was afraid of others overhearing her who might be nearby.
"Just come," she said, "Please, it's important…"
"I was just there a few days ago— and yeah, I know Angel's upset… but I'm not exactly made of plane tickets…"
"I took care of that."
"You took care—"
"There's a car waiting at the curb for you now, it'll take you to the plane."
And Buffy had pushed the drapes away from her bedroom window. There was indeed a sober, black vehicle waiting with the engine on, hovering by the curbside below.
So she came. And she knew, now, that Angel was into something, something she wasn't sure she would like. And she half expected, walking in the door, to see Cordelia there, clinging with grave dirt, shaking and confused as she herself had been. Because that sense of dread was on her, for she knew about power, and about grief, and what grief could make people do with that power.
So she'd come, unsure whether she was there to comfort the berieved or to fight them to the death. It was often that way, with Angel, whose ruthlessness with his convictions was sometimes as dangerous as a ragged blade.
"Angel…?" she called out, uncertainly, into the echoing vast emptiness of the hall. She passed the now empty weapon's cabinet, and the glass walls of the office. There were still papers on the desk, notes pinned to the message boards, written in Cordelia's own hand.
She was passing by the garden doors when she saw a movement, through them. She approached, and the sillohoutte materialized into the doorframe from the light and shadow outside.
---
When he saw her, standing in a light, lacy dress with her hair loose about her shoulders, he smiled a soft and fascinated smile—as if he'd never seen her before that moment.
She stood and looked at him, framed in the light of the door.
Thinking was like treading through heavy water as she stood there, frozen in place.
"You're wearing plaid," she blurted out.
Surprised, he let out a quiet, airy chuckle. She stepped forward, towards him, closing the space and letting the sunlight fall across her. The soft white embroidery of her dress fell in ruched folds down her shoulders, glowing in that sunlight that was almost as bright as the glow in the cave.
She reached out to his sides and gathered up his hands, lightly. They were warm and solid.
She skated her fingers across the surface of the palms, as if she were reading them. But she was looking at his face.
"You're… wearing plaid," she repeated, falteringly, her eyes shining with tears.
A bird called in the garden, clinging in the vines and hopping back and forth against the stones.
"Hello Buffy," he said, overcome the full depth of the tenderness that had grown between them.
---
"Hey Fang Boy," the voice cheerfully erupted, startling Angel out of a full sleep. He'd thought it was Cordelia's voice, a moment, and he half expect her face above him. But it was part of the dream, its sounds, breaking through on reality.
"Lilah," he greeted her.
"You really need to work on staff dicipline. I thought—well, you know, good guys, fighting the fight together, facing peril. All that. Seems like they might actually listen to you once and awhile."
He sat up, letting his sheets fall about him a soft pool. He ran a hand across his eyes.
"What was it you're going on about?"
"Hey I'm doing you a favor—you should know there's been some interesting activity by day in our wacky little family."
"Did someone try to pry your head off again?"
"Hardly. Just think you should be prepared—Fred's been a naughty little independent thinker. I knew there was a reason everyone seems to like her so much."
"I must be forgetting," Angel replied, "Did I tell her not to do something?"
"Well, you certainly wanted to—implied it-- and Fred knew that…" she said, "Lovely set of complexes you have there. All the guilt, and repression, and then more guilt— throw some jealousy on the top of that-- Beautiful."
And she continued, smiling cooly and leaning close.
"I think, really, that's what makes you the man you are today."
---
Spike sat next to Buffy on a high wall. They were both staring out into the ocean.
"But doesn't it hurt?" Buffy asked quietly, after some time. Her tone was soft, as she remembered the harshness of the world around her when she came back.
He looked at her, her hair pushed off her face by the breeze.
"No," he said then, reaching out to finger a strand of her hair gently, where it was strewn down over her shoulder, "It doesn' t hurt at all…"
---
The Hyperion was silent, truly empty. But even through it, the smell of her, that smell of light and power and perfume hovered in the air. And his. But they were gone.
She had been here. She knew. Lilah had warned him, but why had she waited long enough that they'd gone away, together?
---
Buffy stood at the door of the Hyperion, and paused as Spike passed in front of her and through into the lobby. She just watched him. After all their words this day—words that poured out like water—truths that fell over them but didn't hurt at all. It was so different. He was so different—but himself.
What she thought of most when she thought of him—it was there. He was still himself.
"I'll come back," she said, and he turned and watched her, her hand on the door handle.
"Come soon," he said.
And she turned to go, but he called after her.
"Buffy—" he said, and she turned to him.
"When are we going to save the world again?"
She just smiled when he said it, and it was a warm, genuine smile. Not the one she stretched over her face to please her friends. It felt like he'd been given some glowing gift. And a bit of that shining goodness—that pure, tender effulgence that he'd felt in the Other World—that he'd seen in the laughing children on the highway— in Fred's laughter-- it seemed to be in Buffy, too. It wasn't gone—he wasn't bereft of it, it was overflowing in everything alive.
"I'll let you know," she said, turning away into the night.
---
Angel snapped awake with a sense of profound disorientation. He must have drifted asleep in his watch. Which was extremely bad form for a hunter and warrior. Darkness had settled over the tiles of the floor, and he knew it was hours since he'd arrived.
And a sound downstairs. Spike was here. He couldn't hear any sound of the other.
He pitched himself over the railing of the gallery and alighted, lightfooted and silent, on the lobby floor, as if he were some great, black bird swooping down. And he could still hear him, sense Spike's presence. There were regular, rasping sounds coming from the garden—the sound of a pencil hitting paper.
---
Angel's dark sillohoutte entered the garden quietly. Spike was sitting of the floor, a pad of paper on his knee. The night jasmine was blooming, and a quiet, dry breeze floated by.
Spike looked up at the solemn face, watching him. For the hundreth time since he got back, he tried to remember why it was people were so serious all the time.
"Angel," he said, quietly, "You don't look quite proper, you been sleeping enough?"
Everyone kept looking at him with the same worried, careworn faces. They almost looked ill with it, pale and drawn compared to the health and light of the other world he had so recently left behind him.
"I'll get by."
Angel gestured to Spike's sling. It was clipped and forced, as if he were holding something in that was so powerful it shook his foundations.
"How's the arm?"
Spike read the stiffness in his movements, and looked him over carefully.
"I'll get by…"
He lowered his pencil, his full attention on his companion.
"What's that?" Angel asked, his tone guarded as he approached, slowly, pacing through the garden, along the walls.
"Probably the only good thing you ever taught me how to do…"
Spike handed him the drawing. He wasn't as skilled as Angel, with it. Less rigidly controlled technique, less realism in the figures. They always seemed to come from somewhere else. And yet Angelus had been at his most patient when explaining forshortening and light sources. He had almost, occasionally, been pleased with Spike's progress, in spite of himself.
Because—well—because it was Art. And a ballet had once made Angelus weep. And he wept for nothing.
Angel turned the drawing to face him. It was Buffy. Unmistakable, smiling, face framed by her loose, scattered hair.
And something that had been building strained at the tension in his soul. The curtain over his features began to quiver. His mind whirled in a mad rush to maintain control.
His restraint snapped, and he struck out.
Without warning, his fist connected to Spike's jaw and sent him sprawling. The bruises that had been fading across it began to well up with blood.
And Spike did something that took Angel away from himself, and he felt the old, smoldering rage branch out from where it had been twisting in his gut and spread through his body.
He laughed.
A string of bloody saliva trailed down to the flagstones from where he braced them, shaking with the wracks of his laughter.
It was like entering a cold pool of water that enveloped everything and suffocated all other sensation. Angel grabbed him by the shoulders, throwing him through the door, onto the lobby tiles, knocking the wind from him.
Yet still his body shook with it, with the laughter that defied him—it was almost as if Angel wasn't' there at all. Invisible in the enraged expression of his pain.
"What is it, boy?" Angel spat out, his tone cold and familiar as Spike registered it through the ringing pain in his ears.
Spike tried to regain his composure to respond, his breath coming in spasms. He tried to pull himself up on his feet, but slipped and landed again. And it set him laughing.
Angel kicked him in the ribs, and seized him, throwing him again against the wall. He wasn't even fighting back—however he could now, in this weak, human body.
"I asked you a question, boy," he said, the chill in his voice reflected in his eyes, "What is it?"
"I—" Spike spat out, blood running down his cheek from a reopened wound. And yet still he couldn't stop.
"I don't know…" he gasped, "Everything—it just all seems to funny to me now!"
"Well is this Funny?"
Angel pulled him up against the wall, grappling his throat tightly. He gasped innefectually for air.
"Is this funny?"
He pressed harder, and still Spike's eyes were calm. No matter how he'd been hurt, he wasn't afraid at all. And so he did the only think he could do, wringing his neck savagely, throwing him up aganst the wall so his skull hit hard against the surface, denting the drywall.
"Is this FUNNY to you? WELL?"
And the mirth still shined in the blue eyes, the eyes of a man who stared straight into the darkness of death and laughed.
He was mouthing something, trying to speak, but couldn't gather the air. Angel threw him down and Spike was suddenly shaking with ragged coughs. As he tried to speak again, and it came out a dry gurgle.
"What was that?"
"P—Poor Angel," he said, his voice a hoarse croak.
"You think—you think this is the way. B--but you'll always lose, because you never left this… it only lasts—last a minute. And then—then you're al—alone again…"
As the bleeding creature before him laughed in rasping gasts, images ran through his mind. Darla—his father. Cordelia. Cordelia.
He meant to strike out again, to bash the creatures skull out against the floor. But his hand hung limp by his side. And he rushed back to himself as if he'd been physically absent and the crushing weight of it cleaved to him on all sides like the sharp points of an iron maiden.
And Angel was on the ground, though he didn't remember collapsing. And he was sobbing. Sobbing heavy, gasping sobs that shook his shoulders with the violence of them. The walls—his walls were broken and he was running out everywhere, losing himself in the chaos and randomness of his own agonized existence. He sat among the pieces and just cried out in pain.
"She's dead. She's dead and you get to live—" he spat out brokently, and his tone changed and he wasn't speaking about Cordelia anymore.
"You get to live…"
And he felt a hand, suddenly, resting securely on his shoulder. He could smell the bloodied bruises on it.
---
Spike was looking at him with softened eyes. His body was bent and broken, weak and bleeding, but he squeezed Angel's shoulder with confidence and strength. The moment was silent, but something changed between them forever in the instant.
"Oh lovely," the voice rang out over Angel, "We're about to get to some interesting violence and, of course, we have to stop to talk about our feelings…"
Angel looked up. She stood there in her neatly tailored suit.
"Lilah," he said, startled, straining to cover up the explosion of feeling—his red, stained eyes, and found it utterly impossible.
And she grinned then. A wide, cruel grin that was too sharp and long for her face.
"Oh, no," it said coldly, "I'm not Lilah."
Angel started, throwing himself back, and out of Spike's grip. Spike looked confused, staring into the air, seeing nothing at all where Angel stared in dull horror.
"No, Lilah hasn't visited you in quite a while," it continued, "They don't let the dead out quite that easy you know… well, unless they're very special."
She smirked, crouched down and looked Spike in the bloody face.
"Shame, too. These are some amazing bruises."
"Angel," Spike asked, his tone puzzled, "What're you seeing?"
"Spike-- he can't see you…" Angel said.
It melted seamlessly out of her shape and into another. One with dark, doe eyes and a confident, brazen tongue.
"That's the thing," it said bitterly, in Cordelia's voice, "I'm sick of father's favorites, he likes to do that with the ones he snatches—"
It reached out to grab Spike with one hand, and merely passed right through.
"--Out of my fingers."
Spike saw something moving in the air that Angel was looking at with a open, horrified fear. Maybe a twist of light—or was it… was it a claw?
"I'm sick of it! But it doesn't matter-- even if I can't hurt him myself—well, there are other ways. And I'll find them. I've got nothing but time. I'll destroy you, Angel-- you and him and Superbitch, too. I'll hunt you down, I'll set the hounds of hell on your heels and I'll make you hurt until you can feel just a tenth of what I've lost to you three. And believe me--"
"Ah!" Spike exclaimed, breaking into the exchange, "I get what's this is about—bit of payback from old friends, is it?"
Angel turned to look as the man stood up on shakey legs. But his eyes, his eyes were pure fire.
"Well let me tell you-- you're nothing," he said, "You got no power where we won't give it. And I'm getting pretty sick of being tread on. So we'll fight you. Again."
He walked, falteringly towards the disturbance in the air.
"And what's more—we'll win. Consider it a friendly warning"
It turned to look at Angel with Cordelia's face, and vanished.
They were alone, again.
---
Spike planted a deft kick to the training pad, strapped to Charles' arm.
Charles leapt back two paces on the mats in the newly constructed training room. The bright lights illuminated the floor with crisp efficiency.
He changed positions, intent on the session. Spike struck again, one-two with carefully wrapped fists. And again, a carefully measured kick, with his full force.
Charles lost his balance, landing on the ground. He grinned up at the man before him.
"I'd hate to have known you when you had superpowers, man."
Spike helped him up, raising his eyebrows, "Yeah, lots of people hated to know me then."
"Want to try anything else— they've got some sweet new surprises for us in the weapon's room, they've been saying."
"Something to be said for the joy of anticipation," Spike said, fingering his elbow gingerly, "Think I'll take a bit of a breather first."
Charles gestured to Spike's arm. He'd had a few more scars, too, since he'd returned. Some things never heal entirely.
"That still hurting you? Whatever it was that got into you—must've been nasty."
"I'll live," he said, diverting the subject away, "Besides, I've got it on reasonable authority that chicks dig scars."
"Hell, I should get beat up more often!"
They were interrupted by the door swinging open. Angel, followed by Fred walking swiftly behind him. And a man he'd met some weeks earlier, briefly, who they called Wesley. When Fred saw him, walking towards them, she smiled to him brightly. He found himself particularly happy to see her, too, and was surprised to find himself smiling back.
"We came to get Charles," Fred interjected, "There's this cult that's trying to use the combined energy of their souls to raise a—"
"It's a job," Angel interrupted, walking directly up to Spike. He didn't look at the marks that remained, even after the bones had healed.
They'd been talking. When he still had been staying at the Hyperion, Angel had arrived, randomly, and talked to him. Usually about nothing in particular—but sometimes about Cordelia. It was strange. But for all the strangeness, it hadn't , for some reason he couldn't name, felt uncomfortable. Perhaps family blood did run strong.
When Angel had asked, tentatively, if he intended to go to Buffy, Spike had simply said that they'd had their day in the sun.
"A job?"
"Yes."
"I'm in."
"You ready?"
"Hell yes."
"Allright," Angel replied, throwing him a lightweight axe he'd been holding to his side, and which Spike caught deftly, and continued as he turned to the door.
"Let's get to work."
---
--- Part Five ---
Buffy pushed open the Hyperion doors, walking cautiously into the empty space within.
The door shut behind her, the slam of it mingling with the clicking of her heels on the floor. Immediately the busy, morning sounds of traffic muffled to nothing, and the silence of the empty place flowed over her.
It was disconcerting, enough to keep her awake since she'd gotten the call. Fred had been insistent, on the phone, but wouldn't tell her why. It was almost as if she didn't trust Buffy to believe her, or understand her properly. And she spoke quietly, somewhat vaguely, as if she was afraid of others overhearing her who might be nearby.
"Just come," she said, "Please, it's important…"
"I was just there a few days ago— and yeah, I know Angel's upset… but I'm not exactly made of plane tickets…"
"I took care of that."
"You took care—"
"There's a car waiting at the curb for you now, it'll take you to the plane."
And Buffy had pushed the drapes away from her bedroom window. There was indeed a sober, black vehicle waiting with the engine on, hovering by the curbside below.
So she came. And she knew, now, that Angel was into something, something she wasn't sure she would like. And she half expected, walking in the door, to see Cordelia there, clinging with grave dirt, shaking and confused as she herself had been. Because that sense of dread was on her, for she knew about power, and about grief, and what grief could make people do with that power.
So she'd come, unsure whether she was there to comfort the berieved or to fight them to the death. It was often that way, with Angel, whose ruthlessness with his convictions was sometimes as dangerous as a ragged blade.
"Angel…?" she called out, uncertainly, into the echoing vast emptiness of the hall. She passed the now empty weapon's cabinet, and the glass walls of the office. There were still papers on the desk, notes pinned to the message boards, written in Cordelia's own hand.
She was passing by the garden doors when she saw a movement, through them. She approached, and the sillohoutte materialized into the doorframe from the light and shadow outside.
---
When he saw her, standing in a light, lacy dress with her hair loose about her shoulders, he smiled a soft and fascinated smile—as if he'd never seen her before that moment.
She stood and looked at him, framed in the light of the door.
Thinking was like treading through heavy water as she stood there, frozen in place.
"You're wearing plaid," she blurted out.
Surprised, he let out a quiet, airy chuckle. She stepped forward, towards him, closing the space and letting the sunlight fall across her. The soft white embroidery of her dress fell in ruched folds down her shoulders, glowing in that sunlight that was almost as bright as the glow in the cave.
She reached out to his sides and gathered up his hands, lightly. They were warm and solid.
She skated her fingers across the surface of the palms, as if she were reading them. But she was looking at his face.
"You're… wearing plaid," she repeated, falteringly, her eyes shining with tears.
A bird called in the garden, clinging in the vines and hopping back and forth against the stones.
"Hello Buffy," he said, overcome the full depth of the tenderness that had grown between them.
---
"Hey Fang Boy," the voice cheerfully erupted, startling Angel out of a full sleep. He'd thought it was Cordelia's voice, a moment, and he half expect her face above him. But it was part of the dream, its sounds, breaking through on reality.
"Lilah," he greeted her.
"You really need to work on staff dicipline. I thought—well, you know, good guys, fighting the fight together, facing peril. All that. Seems like they might actually listen to you once and awhile."
He sat up, letting his sheets fall about him a soft pool. He ran a hand across his eyes.
"What was it you're going on about?"
"Hey I'm doing you a favor—you should know there's been some interesting activity by day in our wacky little family."
"Did someone try to pry your head off again?"
"Hardly. Just think you should be prepared—Fred's been a naughty little independent thinker. I knew there was a reason everyone seems to like her so much."
"I must be forgetting," Angel replied, "Did I tell her not to do something?"
"Well, you certainly wanted to—implied it-- and Fred knew that…" she said, "Lovely set of complexes you have there. All the guilt, and repression, and then more guilt— throw some jealousy on the top of that-- Beautiful."
And she continued, smiling cooly and leaning close.
"I think, really, that's what makes you the man you are today."
---
Spike sat next to Buffy on a high wall. They were both staring out into the ocean.
"But doesn't it hurt?" Buffy asked quietly, after some time. Her tone was soft, as she remembered the harshness of the world around her when she came back.
He looked at her, her hair pushed off her face by the breeze.
"No," he said then, reaching out to finger a strand of her hair gently, where it was strewn down over her shoulder, "It doesn' t hurt at all…"
---
The Hyperion was silent, truly empty. But even through it, the smell of her, that smell of light and power and perfume hovered in the air. And his. But they were gone.
She had been here. She knew. Lilah had warned him, but why had she waited long enough that they'd gone away, together?
---
Buffy stood at the door of the Hyperion, and paused as Spike passed in front of her and through into the lobby. She just watched him. After all their words this day—words that poured out like water—truths that fell over them but didn't hurt at all. It was so different. He was so different—but himself.
What she thought of most when she thought of him—it was there. He was still himself.
"I'll come back," she said, and he turned and watched her, her hand on the door handle.
"Come soon," he said.
And she turned to go, but he called after her.
"Buffy—" he said, and she turned to him.
"When are we going to save the world again?"
She just smiled when he said it, and it was a warm, genuine smile. Not the one she stretched over her face to please her friends. It felt like he'd been given some glowing gift. And a bit of that shining goodness—that pure, tender effulgence that he'd felt in the Other World—that he'd seen in the laughing children on the highway— in Fred's laughter-- it seemed to be in Buffy, too. It wasn't gone—he wasn't bereft of it, it was overflowing in everything alive.
"I'll let you know," she said, turning away into the night.
---
Angel snapped awake with a sense of profound disorientation. He must have drifted asleep in his watch. Which was extremely bad form for a hunter and warrior. Darkness had settled over the tiles of the floor, and he knew it was hours since he'd arrived.
And a sound downstairs. Spike was here. He couldn't hear any sound of the other.
He pitched himself over the railing of the gallery and alighted, lightfooted and silent, on the lobby floor, as if he were some great, black bird swooping down. And he could still hear him, sense Spike's presence. There were regular, rasping sounds coming from the garden—the sound of a pencil hitting paper.
---
Angel's dark sillohoutte entered the garden quietly. Spike was sitting of the floor, a pad of paper on his knee. The night jasmine was blooming, and a quiet, dry breeze floated by.
Spike looked up at the solemn face, watching him. For the hundreth time since he got back, he tried to remember why it was people were so serious all the time.
"Angel," he said, quietly, "You don't look quite proper, you been sleeping enough?"
Everyone kept looking at him with the same worried, careworn faces. They almost looked ill with it, pale and drawn compared to the health and light of the other world he had so recently left behind him.
"I'll get by."
Angel gestured to Spike's sling. It was clipped and forced, as if he were holding something in that was so powerful it shook his foundations.
"How's the arm?"
Spike read the stiffness in his movements, and looked him over carefully.
"I'll get by…"
He lowered his pencil, his full attention on his companion.
"What's that?" Angel asked, his tone guarded as he approached, slowly, pacing through the garden, along the walls.
"Probably the only good thing you ever taught me how to do…"
Spike handed him the drawing. He wasn't as skilled as Angel, with it. Less rigidly controlled technique, less realism in the figures. They always seemed to come from somewhere else. And yet Angelus had been at his most patient when explaining forshortening and light sources. He had almost, occasionally, been pleased with Spike's progress, in spite of himself.
Because—well—because it was Art. And a ballet had once made Angelus weep. And he wept for nothing.
Angel turned the drawing to face him. It was Buffy. Unmistakable, smiling, face framed by her loose, scattered hair.
And something that had been building strained at the tension in his soul. The curtain over his features began to quiver. His mind whirled in a mad rush to maintain control.
His restraint snapped, and he struck out.
Without warning, his fist connected to Spike's jaw and sent him sprawling. The bruises that had been fading across it began to well up with blood.
And Spike did something that took Angel away from himself, and he felt the old, smoldering rage branch out from where it had been twisting in his gut and spread through his body.
He laughed.
A string of bloody saliva trailed down to the flagstones from where he braced them, shaking with the wracks of his laughter.
It was like entering a cold pool of water that enveloped everything and suffocated all other sensation. Angel grabbed him by the shoulders, throwing him through the door, onto the lobby tiles, knocking the wind from him.
Yet still his body shook with it, with the laughter that defied him—it was almost as if Angel wasn't' there at all. Invisible in the enraged expression of his pain.
"What is it, boy?" Angel spat out, his tone cold and familiar as Spike registered it through the ringing pain in his ears.
Spike tried to regain his composure to respond, his breath coming in spasms. He tried to pull himself up on his feet, but slipped and landed again. And it set him laughing.
Angel kicked him in the ribs, and seized him, throwing him again against the wall. He wasn't even fighting back—however he could now, in this weak, human body.
"I asked you a question, boy," he said, the chill in his voice reflected in his eyes, "What is it?"
"I—" Spike spat out, blood running down his cheek from a reopened wound. And yet still he couldn't stop.
"I don't know…" he gasped, "Everything—it just all seems to funny to me now!"
"Well is this Funny?"
Angel pulled him up against the wall, grappling his throat tightly. He gasped innefectually for air.
"Is this funny?"
He pressed harder, and still Spike's eyes were calm. No matter how he'd been hurt, he wasn't afraid at all. And so he did the only think he could do, wringing his neck savagely, throwing him up aganst the wall so his skull hit hard against the surface, denting the drywall.
"Is this FUNNY to you? WELL?"
And the mirth still shined in the blue eyes, the eyes of a man who stared straight into the darkness of death and laughed.
He was mouthing something, trying to speak, but couldn't gather the air. Angel threw him down and Spike was suddenly shaking with ragged coughs. As he tried to speak again, and it came out a dry gurgle.
"What was that?"
"P—Poor Angel," he said, his voice a hoarse croak.
"You think—you think this is the way. B--but you'll always lose, because you never left this… it only lasts—last a minute. And then—then you're al—alone again…"
As the bleeding creature before him laughed in rasping gasts, images ran through his mind. Darla—his father. Cordelia. Cordelia.
He meant to strike out again, to bash the creatures skull out against the floor. But his hand hung limp by his side. And he rushed back to himself as if he'd been physically absent and the crushing weight of it cleaved to him on all sides like the sharp points of an iron maiden.
And Angel was on the ground, though he didn't remember collapsing. And he was sobbing. Sobbing heavy, gasping sobs that shook his shoulders with the violence of them. The walls—his walls were broken and he was running out everywhere, losing himself in the chaos and randomness of his own agonized existence. He sat among the pieces and just cried out in pain.
"She's dead. She's dead and you get to live—" he spat out brokently, and his tone changed and he wasn't speaking about Cordelia anymore.
"You get to live…"
And he felt a hand, suddenly, resting securely on his shoulder. He could smell the bloodied bruises on it.
---
Spike was looking at him with softened eyes. His body was bent and broken, weak and bleeding, but he squeezed Angel's shoulder with confidence and strength. The moment was silent, but something changed between them forever in the instant.
"Oh lovely," the voice rang out over Angel, "We're about to get to some interesting violence and, of course, we have to stop to talk about our feelings…"
Angel looked up. She stood there in her neatly tailored suit.
"Lilah," he said, startled, straining to cover up the explosion of feeling—his red, stained eyes, and found it utterly impossible.
And she grinned then. A wide, cruel grin that was too sharp and long for her face.
"Oh, no," it said coldly, "I'm not Lilah."
Angel started, throwing himself back, and out of Spike's grip. Spike looked confused, staring into the air, seeing nothing at all where Angel stared in dull horror.
"No, Lilah hasn't visited you in quite a while," it continued, "They don't let the dead out quite that easy you know… well, unless they're very special."
She smirked, crouched down and looked Spike in the bloody face.
"Shame, too. These are some amazing bruises."
"Angel," Spike asked, his tone puzzled, "What're you seeing?"
"Spike-- he can't see you…" Angel said.
It melted seamlessly out of her shape and into another. One with dark, doe eyes and a confident, brazen tongue.
"That's the thing," it said bitterly, in Cordelia's voice, "I'm sick of father's favorites, he likes to do that with the ones he snatches—"
It reached out to grab Spike with one hand, and merely passed right through.
"--Out of my fingers."
Spike saw something moving in the air that Angel was looking at with a open, horrified fear. Maybe a twist of light—or was it… was it a claw?
"I'm sick of it! But it doesn't matter-- even if I can't hurt him myself—well, there are other ways. And I'll find them. I've got nothing but time. I'll destroy you, Angel-- you and him and Superbitch, too. I'll hunt you down, I'll set the hounds of hell on your heels and I'll make you hurt until you can feel just a tenth of what I've lost to you three. And believe me--"
"Ah!" Spike exclaimed, breaking into the exchange, "I get what's this is about—bit of payback from old friends, is it?"
Angel turned to look as the man stood up on shakey legs. But his eyes, his eyes were pure fire.
"Well let me tell you-- you're nothing," he said, "You got no power where we won't give it. And I'm getting pretty sick of being tread on. So we'll fight you. Again."
He walked, falteringly towards the disturbance in the air.
"And what's more—we'll win. Consider it a friendly warning"
It turned to look at Angel with Cordelia's face, and vanished.
They were alone, again.
---
Spike planted a deft kick to the training pad, strapped to Charles' arm.
Charles leapt back two paces on the mats in the newly constructed training room. The bright lights illuminated the floor with crisp efficiency.
He changed positions, intent on the session. Spike struck again, one-two with carefully wrapped fists. And again, a carefully measured kick, with his full force.
Charles lost his balance, landing on the ground. He grinned up at the man before him.
"I'd hate to have known you when you had superpowers, man."
Spike helped him up, raising his eyebrows, "Yeah, lots of people hated to know me then."
"Want to try anything else— they've got some sweet new surprises for us in the weapon's room, they've been saying."
"Something to be said for the joy of anticipation," Spike said, fingering his elbow gingerly, "Think I'll take a bit of a breather first."
Charles gestured to Spike's arm. He'd had a few more scars, too, since he'd returned. Some things never heal entirely.
"That still hurting you? Whatever it was that got into you—must've been nasty."
"I'll live," he said, diverting the subject away, "Besides, I've got it on reasonable authority that chicks dig scars."
"Hell, I should get beat up more often!"
They were interrupted by the door swinging open. Angel, followed by Fred walking swiftly behind him. And a man he'd met some weeks earlier, briefly, who they called Wesley. When Fred saw him, walking towards them, she smiled to him brightly. He found himself particularly happy to see her, too, and was surprised to find himself smiling back.
"We came to get Charles," Fred interjected, "There's this cult that's trying to use the combined energy of their souls to raise a—"
"It's a job," Angel interrupted, walking directly up to Spike. He didn't look at the marks that remained, even after the bones had healed.
They'd been talking. When he still had been staying at the Hyperion, Angel had arrived, randomly, and talked to him. Usually about nothing in particular—but sometimes about Cordelia. It was strange. But for all the strangeness, it hadn't , for some reason he couldn't name, felt uncomfortable. Perhaps family blood did run strong.
When Angel had asked, tentatively, if he intended to go to Buffy, Spike had simply said that they'd had their day in the sun.
"A job?"
"Yes."
"I'm in."
"You ready?"
"Hell yes."
"Allright," Angel replied, throwing him a lightweight axe he'd been holding to his side, and which Spike caught deftly, and continued as he turned to the door.
"Let's get to work."
---