Changes
Disclaimer: Gunn belongs to Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon. I'm only borrowing him, but I wish I didn't have to give him back.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Birthday-verse Gunn reflects on how things got to be so bad.
Author's Note: I love alternate universes. The Wish is one of my favorite Buffy episodes. Birthday isn't near as good, but I still am very intrigued by the alternate reality we're shown. This is my attempt to give it a shake, and see what comes out.
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Gunn remembered happier times.
It seemed hard to believe, sometimes. He wouldn't have believed it himself, if he hadn't lived it.
He remembered what it was like in the beginning. When he had begun to step out of the shadow cast by Alonna's death. Making new friends, getting a new crew, even if there were only two in that crew, and he wasn't exactly the leader anymore. But that was all right. Angel was the boss and Wesley surprised them all with his abilities, so they got along just fine.
In the early days, in fact, things were more than fine. Angel was a bit quiet, but content to just be there, on the fringes of the growing friendship between his two employees. Sometimes he even joined in, and it seemed like he was making strides toward humanity. The visions weren't so bad then, and he recovered from them quickly. They thought things would go on like that indefinitely, and Gunn took pride in what he was doing.
Some nights they would sit around Wes's apartment, playing Nintendo. Other nights they would go out, on the hunt. They watched old DVDs. They argued. They saved each other's lives. They drank a lot of beer. They did some good and they fought the good fight.
Gunn was happy those days. The happiest he would ever be.
Then things started to go bad. Angel's visions grew steadily worse. They lasted longer, and they were more painful. Sometimes he became violent. He was depresed a lot. He hardly talked anymore. He got confused.
Like the night of the Kungai demon.
It was a vision. A Kungai, Angel said. Maybe two. Maybe the same one Wes had been hunting when he showed up in Los Angeles.
One or two? they asked him.
Angel didn't know. His eyes darted back and forth between them, and his indecision was plain to see on his face. Then he said, Just one.
So they went on the hunt. And they killed the Kungai. And they were leaving the lair when the second demon, the one that had hidden in secret, leaped on them.
When it was over, Wesley was missing an arm and Angel almost staked himself from the guilt.
After that, nothing went right.
For a few weeks Gunn found himself hoping Wesley would die. Then he could stake Angel as a mercy-killing, and be done with all this. Because it wasn't fun anymore and the lives he saved didn't seem to matter as much. He felt like the ground he walked on was sinking beneath him, taking him down with it, and he couldn't ever run fast enough or far enough to escape it.
But Wes lived. Persevered, in fact, finding new ways to fight, even though he would never be as effective as he once had been. Gunn had never seen anyone possess such deadly aim with a crossbow before. Now there were no more crossbows in their arsenal. Why bother, when the one person who could use it could no longer even hold it?
So they fought on. A little differently now, but still fighting the good fight. For whatever that was worth.
Angel sank deeper into the hell created by the visions. He had to be restrained sometimes when the visions were particularly bad. The first time he sent them out to save someone Angelus had killed two hundred years previous, Gunn came back from the wasted trip and slugged Angel in the face. He felt like the walls were closing about him, cutting him off from everything he had ever known. The only things that existed anymore were that dim apartment and the desperate voice of the vampire. Nothing ever changed, except to get worse and worse.
And then suddenly, something different.
Sent by Angel, they went out on a routine demon-killing mission one night, only to find that someone had already beat them there. Gunn stared at her with a mixture of shock and delight. To think, those Sunnydale folks hadn't been lying all this time. They really did know the fabulous, famous, Cordelia Chase.
Cordelia, despite the ditzy girl she played on TV, turned out to be all right. She insisted on seeing Angel, and so she rode back with them to the apartment. Gunn was restless as they walked inside. Something felt different. Something was going to happen, he was sure of it.
For the first time in a long time, something was about to change.
END