Disclaimer: I am not making any money from this. I do not own any characters that you may recognize.
Author's Note: This is set immediately following "Chosen." Those brave few who continue past the prologue with me will quickly realize that I'm, for lack of a nicer term, throwing out what happened in the final season of Angel, for no better reason than I didn't like it. Happy reading!
The Archangel
Prologue- Sunnydale, 2003
Before the light of day first touched the ruins, wreckage shifted, settling in for a long afterlife, sending the odd creak or crash reverberating through the remains of houses, telephone poles, schools, post offices… people… demons. Even the Hellmouth hundreds of feet below, was finally silent, the lips of its gaping maw sewn tightly shut at last.
It was a scarce few hours after the final battle for Sunnydale's soul had been lost, even while the battle for the world's future had been won. No living thing stirred, yet the very ground seemed restless.
The light was moving.
If anyone had been there, they would have seen dawn break over a pile of ashes.
For what was happening at that moment, like much of what had once gone on in Sunnydale, was simply not understandable to the mortal human mind.
The wind that swept the morning's horizon brought with it something no living eye could see: an angel.
Angels were feared and loathed and sometimes even spoken of with a veiled reverence by their dark counterparts. Demons knew on an intellectual level what angels were: simply dead humans graced in their afterlife by an extraordinary beauty and the gift of flight. However, this never managed to change their opinion of humans as dim-witted and obscenely mortal creatures.
The angel was bathed in light, obscuring much of its individual features. To demons—and indeed to humans who somehow had seen them in their proper raiment—all angels were alike.
As soon as she got closer, her gender, creamy robes and massive wings could be distinguished.
There was something terrible about an angel's beauty; they all seemed to be equally representative of God's wrath as His mercy. They were rarely seen on earth except to bring the dying to Heaven and deal vengeance to demons and vampires. Preferably, they could accomplish both. This angel's mission, however, would prove to be one of mercy, for a great victory had just been won, and the Light had never been stronger.
The angel dove to earth and broke through the first twenty of so feet of Sunnydale's debris. She was God's thunder now, the trumpets bringing down the walls of Jericho.
In the center of the ruins, one soul could see her. He knelt, looking much like he had in unlife, his soft, worn leather duster strewn carelessly about him. He watched the angel come crashing down from Heaven, and he gaped in shock, his blue eyes reflecting the light of the God that was waiting for him.
The angel landed in front of him, her enormous wingspan was reduced as she folded her wings away. He now recognized the angel, but could not speak.
He was able to see her now: curling brown hair, kind eyes that were currently shining with tears. She was warm and motherly, and the man had thought that he would never see her again.
"Joyce?" he croaked.
She seemed also unable to speak, and nodded. Her wings rustled; her robes were becoming sullied with ash.
"William," she said, as though trying out the name on him.
"I've come to take you home."
She could bear it no longer and threw her arms around him. She was a middle-aged, tiny woman. He was nothing but a Cockney street punk with bleached-white hair and an apparently permanent stench of alcohol and smoke that lingered around him.
Nevertheless, she shifted him into her arms like a little child and kissed his cheek. She stood, still holding this man twice her size, and with a beat of her powerful wings, launched into the air. They left the earth in a flood of light.
The LA Times reported the next day that a more glorious dawn had never been seen in southern California.