BLEED FOR ME

Author: Zefiros83
Disclaimer: Characters from BtVS belong to Joss Whedon. Or to Mutant Enemy. Or to whoever it is that owns them. g I'm just borrowing them for fun.
Distribution: Want, Take, Have. That simple.
Rating: R for some good amount of reason. And well, adult themes.
Summary: B/A. This story takes place in the early S3, beginning right after everyone's found out Angel's back from Hell. Buffy's saddened that her friends and family aren't supportive of her relationship with Angel. She's beginning to think they will never understand - when the latest nasty in town gives her a welcome distraction. Plz R&R.

CHAPTER 4. STAGES OF GRIEF

She left me, and I stayed alone,
Thinking over every tone,
Which, though silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever - O too much! -
The soft vibration of her touch
As her gentle hand even now
Lightly trembled on my brow;
And thus, although she absent were
Memory gave me all of her

- P. B. Shelley -

It had been a bleak, rainy day in Sunnydale. Dark clouds rolled across the sky, forming an impenetrable layer of smoky grey. Rain drummed the ceilings of buildings and poared down the streets, washing away the warmth and dust from the pavement. Thunder rolled in the distance.

Angel slept.

He'd found Buffy in his restless dreams, standing there at the foot of his bed, wearing the same clothes he'd seen her in last night. Her hair was wet, and she looked at him pleadingly. Like she was lost and didn't know how to get back. She said nothing.

"Come here." He asked her, and she complied. Her hips swayed sensually as she walked over to him.

Angel sat up in his bed, placing his bare feet down on the ground. Upon contact, the coldness of the stone floor shot through him like a burst of electricity. He shivered, listening to the water poaring down the drainpipes as a constant, hypnotic stream. There was a storm brewing on the Hellmouth, and it filled him with a sense of foreboding.

Buffy stopped mere inches from Angel and smiled at him sadly. Her skin glowed like it was lit from within, and she looked as beautiful and fragile as a sculpture in glass. Upon Angel's appreciative gaze she stepped even closer and caressed the side of his face. Her expression was intensely focused as she stared into his eyes.

"Be strong for me, honey. Don't give up." She whispered, and pressed a reverent kiss on his forehead.

"I won't." Angel replied, staring into her eyes worriedly. Something had changed in their hazel depths. Something was wrong.

Buffy's delicate fingers trailed from the back of his neck to his shoulders. She pushed him back down on the bed till he lay sprawled on his back. She wasted no time in climbing up on top of him, effectively straddling him by the waist. Her nails raked up and down the sides of his bare upper body as she kissed him, hard and ferocious. She seemed a little off, Angel thought. It was her beautiful body touching him but her movements and expressions weren't her own. Her caresses suddenly felt alien and unfamiliar. It was frightening.

"B-Buffy?" Angel uttered and tried to get up, but she pressed him hard into the mattress, leering down at him darkly. She leaned in, nibbled on his earlobe and whispered in a hoarse, netherworldly voice; "Enjoy it while you can. I have her now." Then the not-Buffy turned into some black and hissing thing, and bit down on his jugular, creating shadows of pure white pain.

Lighting crackled nearby and woke Angel with a jolt. He sat up in his bed, glancing around in the dim lighting, looking for the demonic version of Buffy he'd met in his sleep. But instead he found himself alone in his gloomy mansion, in game face and covered in cold sweat. Rain was still poaring down outside. Thunder struck and swept flashes of light against the deep crimson hue of the curtains covering his bedroom window. Angel ran his fingers through his hair and drew in a shaky breath, trying to calm himself down. His recent nightmare wasn't the first he'd ever had in regards to Buffy, but something about this one left him shaken and disturbed. He wasn't supposed to have prophetic dreams, was he? Only slayers, psychics and certain other higher beings were burdained with those. Not vampires.

So there was really no reason to alarm Buffy. She'd be just fine. He'd make sure of that.

Angel collapsed back on the bed, and stared out through the curtains and into the rain. He couldn't see much, other than the headlights of passing cars. Wind rattled branches of the nearby trees against the glass. He felt drained.

Suddenly his vampiric hearing picked up the faint sound of a phone ringing in the adjacent room. He padded out into the main hall and picked up his cellular phone from where he'd left it on the coffee table, answering the unknown caller with an impatient 'hello'.

"Angel? It's Willow. Hi."

He could hear sobbing on the other end of the line. "Is something wrong? What is it?" He asked, gripping the phone tightly. Please let it not be about Buffy.

Willow sniffled and steadied her voice as best she could. "It's Buffy.. She was attacked last night.. Right outside the Bronze. There was nothing we could do.."

Angel swallowed hard. "W-What are you saying?" He asked, refusing to acknowledge the answer he already knew.

"It killed her!" Willow cried brokenly over the connection. "A vampire attacked her and it killed her!"

"A-Angel? Are you there? H-hello?"

The phone dropped lifelessly and shattered against the cold stone floor.

Angel parked his sleek black convertible outside the town morgue. He hesitated a moment outside the box-shaped building, before he marched up the stairs and through the front door. Immediatly his eyes landed on the person on-call, seated opposite from him behind a glass wall and a counter.

The clerk raised his eyes and looked at Angel. "Oi. What do you want?" He asked.

"I.. I want to see her - Buffy Summers. She's.. She was brought in last night." Angel could hear himself speak the words, but it was as though he were stuck in a surreal dreamworld, where nothing felt real and nothing hurt. Any minute now he expected to wake up at his mansion, with Buffy still fast asleep in his arms. He wanted to pinch himself so that this horrifying reality would sooner come to an end, but he was too numb to feel pain. And it hardly mattered, since no amount of pinching could wake him from this nightmare. Nothing could, since he wasn't sleeping. This was really happening; Buffy had died.

But at the same time Angel knew he would never believe it until he saw her lifeless body with his own two eyes. Perhaps this was all just a misunderstanding. A cruel joke.

It had to be.

"OK. If you'd just sign here.." The clerk pushed a pen and an open folder over to Angel. Once he'd written down what looked like his initials, the clerk stepped out of his office. "Follow me." He said and pushed open a steel door that lead to a long white corridor. The distinct, sterile hospital smell there invaded Angel's senses. Buffy would have hated it here, he thought dejectedly.

"Are you her boyfriend or something? My condoences. What a tragedy eh, such a young girl."

Angel gritted his teeth and glanced angrily at the man as they walked along the hallway. He'd never hated a person more than he did right now. He'd lost his whole world in one day, and all this man could say was 'what a tragedy, eh'?

The clerk kept chatting idly about his work, stuffing donuts into his mouth. And all Angel wanted to do was to break every bone in his body until he screamed his apologies and felt every bit as much agony as Angel did. I'd like to see him open his stupid mouth, then.

What held him back wasn't his control over his emotions - it was Buffy's voice telling him she didn't need that; that she expected more of him. And she was right. Violence wouldn't solve his problems or make him feel better in the least. Not that anything could, other than Buffy herself.

"Through here." The clerk said then, interrupting Angel's train of thoughts. He pushed open a set of swinging doors and Angel followed in stride, entering the room where all the bodies were stored. The clerk looked around for a while before he found locker number 42. He opened the hatch and pulled out a metallic tray and the body of a woman laying on top of it, wholly covered by a white sheet. As Angel stepped closer, the clerk pulled back the sheet from the woman's face, revealing matted blond hair and familiar pretty features. Buffy, Angel held back a sob. Her eyes were closed and she had no expression, but she was definately Buffy. A hint of her parfume wafted to his nose, and it brought back so many happy memories from last week Angel wanted to bawl. It was all too much to take in, he could barely function.

"H-how did she..? What happened?" He managed to ask, still unable to tear his eyes from Buffy's motionless form.

"Her parents didn't want an autopsy.. It seemed like a pretty straight-forward case. The head trauma, the account from her friends of an attacker-- cops wrote it down as a mugging. But you ask me? I've seen some weird shit while I've worked here, man. Bitemarks, claw-prints, you name it. Could have been an animal attack, that's all I can say."

"Could you-- Could you give me a minute alone with her?"

"Sure, take your time. I'll be down the hall."

Angel waited until the clerk had left before he reached out and cupped the side of Buffy's face. She looked so tiny and pale, lying there on the cold steel with nothing but a flimsy sheet to cover her body. The thought that she had spent the whole day alone in the blackness of that locker was almost unbearable for Angel. Wouldn't she get scared? Wouldn't she need something for warmth? No, of course not. Not anymore.

A single tear fell on Buffy's ashen white face. Angel quietly removed it with his thumb. This lifeless thing wasn't Buffy, was it? It looked like her, god it even smelled like her but.. Where was her joie de vivre, the twinkle in her eyes, her sweet voice? It had all gone, gone away. This empty shell was all that remained of the Buffy he loved. And soon enough, he wouldn't even have that. Even her body would be gone. Food for the worms.

The rest of the world would continue on as though nothing had happened, while his lay in ruins.

"B-Buffy.." Angel broke down in tears and clutched her petite figure to his. "Please don't leave me alone like this.."

Then Angel simply cried. There was no answer, there never would be again.

A few weeks passed before Giles finally mustered up the strength to go visit Angel at his mansion. Buffy's death had been such a shock for all of them, they hadn't been able to so much as consider work for great many days. But the Hellmouth didn't know of a grieving period. Quite the contrary, having heard of the slayer's downfall, Sunnydale had been flooded with more vampires than they could count. Giles felt it was high time they took action, before the creatures could launch a full-scale attack on the town's inhabitants. And for that, they needed help.

He knocked on Angel's front door, but there was no answer. The door creaked as it opened into the main hall. The place was a mess.

Walking through one trashed room upon another, Giles saw empty, discarded whiskey-bottles everywhere. Dust covered everything from the floors to the crimson red draperies that blocked out the light of day. The air was stale throughout the mansion, completing the atmosphere that reeked of misery and ruin. Shards of glass and shattered furniture coated the floor. But no Angel. Finally Giles found him in the master bedroom, passed out on the bed, one of the many blouses Buffy had left behind ceremonially placed next to him on the silken sheets.

Giles cleared his throat to awaken the vampire.

Angel leapt up at the sudden interruption, and attacked Giles in a drunken fit. Their struggle was brief and constrained. Since Angel was drastically weakened by not having fed for days, it wasn't difficult for the stake-equipped Giles to corner him against a wall. The Watcher prepared for the vampire's counter-attack, stake poised and ready to strike, but Angel seemed to have lost his fighting spirit. He merely sagged against the wall, eyeing Giles with a pained expression. Waiting perhaps, for him to plunge in with his stake and put him out of his misery. Giles stepped back and lowered his weapon. However, Angel was far from grateful.

"Why don't you just do us all a favour and finish me off?" He scoffed bitterly, the words slurring in his throat. Even though he'd drank enough to make the room spin inside his head, it still wasn't enough to supress the screams of anguish in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he met the sight of Buffy's ashen face, and he wanted to cry out from the pain of it.

Angel refocused his eyes on Giles, the father figure of Buffy's circle of friends. "Come on, don't tell me you haven't thought about it?" He spat out, meeting the man's icy gaze fearlessly, practically daring him to plunge the stake into his undead heart. "I killed Jenny, didn't I? Tortured you.." Angel forced a gleeful indifference into his voice, and grinned bitterly at the pain that appeared in the Wather's eyes. "Failed your Slayer.." At that last statement Angel's grin turned into a deep, sorrowful frown, and his voice deflated of any arrogance. Giles cleared his throat, the stake still clutched firmly in his hand.

"Truth be told, the sight of your death would please me. I can't deny that. But.." Giles' voice was deeply troubled and filled with emotion unlike of him. "Buffy would not have wanted that. She wouldn't have wanted any harm to befall you. As much as the rest of us failed to understand the sense in your relationship.. She did love you. And I believe you gave her some measure of happiness, too."

Angel tore himself free and staggered across the hall, grabbing a half-empty whiskey bottle and then emptying it's contents into himself. The liquor burned as it flowed down his throat, but Angel welcomed the sensation. "Happiness?" He frowned at the floor, swaying as he stood there, round-shouldered in the shame of his defeat. "How much good did that do her when some fledgling tore into her throat? How happy was she then, huh Giles?" Angel shook his head at the floor, sheer misery punctuating his every word.

"I was supposed to be her guardian angel, not the other way around.."

"Angel. The reason I'm here is because we need your help. Until the next slayer arrives to watch over the Hellmouth, we're all in need of protection, especially against Savina and vampire order!"

"So why come to me then, hmm? What am I, but useless?" Angel sighed as he collapsed on the nearby chair. "Not a man, not a demon.. not anybody's champion." He continued passively. "I wonder, if I ever had it in me? Or if I just fooled myself into thinking so, to justify my selfish need of her.."

"You'll tarnish her memory by acting this way!"

"And how exactly, am I supposed to act, huh? How am I supposed to go on? And for what? My great big redemption? I'd rather die a thousand deaths than live this.. mockery."

"Now you listen to me, and listen good! You can't let the world she gave her life for, be destroyed! That would undo her sacrifise, all that she stood for."

"What can I do. Nothing. I'll just get the rest of you killed aswell. Hell, I might even be the one doing the killing." Angel looked up at Giles, a good measure of guilt in his eyes for yet another mention to his brief revertation as his demonic self. "Giles.. Would you really want me there? Knowing, what you do?"

"It's not a question of want, but necessity. I'm not over-joyed by the potential, I won't lie to you, but I am not about to point-blank refuse your help either. She thought you worthy of a second chance.. that should be enough for the rest of us." Giles spoke. "Now you can choose to rot in here with the ghosts of the past, or you can choose to keep her memory alive by continuing her work. It's up to you. I shall be at the library, researching this latest threat. Be there, should you consider her important enough to be remembered."

"Giles." Angel called out after him, just as he was about to disappear through the exit. The watcher turned back, and waited for the vampire to continue. "How can you work? Now, when she's.."

"Someone has to. I believe she's taught us all that." Giles answered, and left Angel alone with his thoughts.

Later that day, the Scoobies sat gathered around the library table.

"So, ya really think deadboy's gonna show?" Xander flashed a nervous smile at Giles.

"To be entirely honest, I don't know. He seems to have taken Buffy's.. death.. harder than most of us will ever realize." Giles answered uncomfortably. The others needn't know the peculiar details of Angel's behaviour - not the way he'd been acting. Grief was understandable in the circumstances - they'd all felt it intensely over the last few weeks - but Angel had seemed bent on self-destruction. Giles wondered whether or not it had been the right decision to ask for Angel's assistance. Indeed, if the vampire's sanity was in questionable state, he might do them more harm than good.

But Giles felt compelled to give him the benefit of doubt. It had been Buffy's wish.. How could he refuse?

"I still can't believe she's really gone. It's like, any minute now I'm expecting her to walk through those doors and say; 'you look like you've seen a ghost'. Or something along those lines." Willow frowned sadly.

"Yes.." Giles smiled wistfully at the thought of his Slayer. "But as much as we will, undoubtedly miss her.. The Hellmouth has to be kept under our supervision. It is what she would've wanted us to do."

"Yeah. But why do we have to involve soul-boy?" Xander huffed bitterly, and closed the book he'd been flipping through.

"Well, there is the issue that our group, however dynamic it may be, is currently lacking--"

"The brawn. The superhuman strength. The one who'll be doing all the kicking and the hairpulling." Cordelia pitched in from across the table.

"Yes, Cordelia, thankyou. It is true that since Faith, our second Slayer, has turned up missing and Buffy's replacement.. is yet to appear.. The only logic alternative would be to turn to--"

"Angel!" Willow interrupted, nodging her head in the direction of the doors. Angel stood there, a good distance between him and the rest of the group.

"Hello Angel. We were expecting you." Giles greeted him. Even though the vampire had freshened up a bit, his eyes still looked bloodshot from too little sleep and far too heavy drinking.

"Man, what happened to you?" Xander eyed the dark haired man. "You look like hell."

"Oww, that hurt!" He shot a glance at Cordelia, whose heels had just connected with his shin.

"Hi." Angel merely replied.

"Do-- Do join us. We were just about to discuss, uh, the proper way to deal with our currently.. uh, Slayer-less Hellmouth." Giles suggested, and the eyes of the entire Scooby gang followed the vampire as he walked over to the stairs and sat down, keeping a good distance from everyone still.

"Right. So the patrolling. Now, do I really need to remind you that I prefer to stay alive over the joy of staining my 200 dollar shoes in demon goo? 'Cos really, common knowledge." Cordelia spoke up.

"One might dare say that's not all that's common about ya." Xander quipped, making the brunette beauty-queen fume back at him. "Well aren't you talking like a true expert." She sneered venomously.

"I can patrol." Angel spoke up, with an unnerving calmness.

"We're not suggesting you do it by yourself, Angel." Giles remarked. "In case you should run into the next Slayer, one of us should be there to inform her of your.. special circumstances."

Angel glanced up at the Watcher. "I work alone." He said darkly.

"But.."

"I'm not losing anyone else over this. I work alone."

Willow cringed as Angel stormed out of the library, leaving the twin doors swinging in his wake. "Well, that went well. On the scale of 1 to 10 where ten is the nuclear holocaust, and one is the.. Umm.. lack thereof?" She mused out loud, ever the optimist.

"I wish Buffy was here to deal with him." Cordelia sighed, and the silence that followed hung heavy in air. They all wished that.

AN: Thanks for all the encouragement. It means a lot! g Another week till chapter 5!