Something that I wrote for a guild of mine called 'What We Do.' Takes placed after the end of both shows, the group now living over the Hellmouth in Cleveland, Ohio. Continuation of the Dreams and Nightmares stories. Most of what Angel/us says are taken out of Boys Night Out songs from the Broken Bones and Bloody Kisses EP. Enjoy.
His body jerked upright into a sitting position, naked chest covered in a fine sheen of cold sweat. Despite the fact that he hadn't needed to breathe normally in over a two hundred years, his chest rose and fell like any normal person who had just pulled themselves from a nightmare. It had been the same dream for over a week now. Not something that he had just randomly thought of while in a state of unconsciousness, but something that he felt he had just done. Something that was plaguing him.
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He could still see her face. She was beautiful, a busty brunette that had been on the way home from a long night of bar hopping and drinking herself into a stupor. She hadn't noticed as he tagged along half a block behind her, grinning the whole time while he watched her stumble into a few trash cans by the curb of her apartment building before walking towards the door. That was when he moved.
Fingers of one hand wrapped around her throat, cutting off any sort of scream that might have escaped her in surprise at being assaulted. All that came from her were tiny, choked cries as he dragged her behind him to the park across the street. There, she was tossed over the back of a metal bench, landing hard on her head. As soon as her tanned flesh split and she started spilling blood on the muddy grass below, he could smell it. Not only had she bashed her head open, but one of her arms had been twisted so that when she landed, it snapped.
"The first time I saw a body bend that way I realized it was more beautiful dead than alive. With bloodied flesh removed, your ribcage ripped away, I saw why they say beauty comes from the inside." One boot came down on the back of the bench, stepping up and over it as he landed on the ground beside the girl. She smelled nice. A mix of sweat, blood, and alcohol. Angelus could have just taken her there if he'd wanted to. But it just wasn't his style to feed from a person without first breaking both their body and mind.
Scenes were added and some scenes were missing when his brain played them back to him in his sleep, sometimes watching as Angelus brutally beat the girl to within an inch of her life and sometimes skipping over it with no control over any of it. It all seemed so real. He always remember one moment, however, where he was kneeling over her, holding her head in his lap. The vampire's fingertips traced across her face, now covered in so much blood and gore that she was hardly recognizable. She was perfect looking, one eye swollen shut, struggling to breathe.
"I promise never to forget you. And you'll remember me for as long as you live, because your life ends right here. Right now, as I tear your heart apart. I pray they find you and use the softest words to hide the hardest truth." His thumb pressed against one of the larger gashes on her face, slipping under the skin, his eyes closing and a soft 'coo'ing sound escaping past his pale lips at the screams that followed. "Not even the softest words can heal the deepest wounds."
The blood had started to pool around them, both the male and female covered in it, as well as the large portion of the grass they had been laying in. There was a storm drain nearby, the crimson liquid pouring into the dark recesses like some kind of crimson syrup waterfall. It was beautiful the way it drained away.
"You know, I never got to know you and I never knew your name." The poor, abused creature continue to sob in the monster's arms as his face shifted. With a small growl and a wicked smirk, fangs flashing, she'd be able to see his amber-hued orbs glow in the darkness that surrounded the both of them. "Yeah, life's not fair..." Leaning forward, he placed a small kiss atop her forehead, lips pulling back stained from the bloodied flesh.
"But, you know it has a strange way of working out." A small, menacing chuckled followed his words while his head tipped forward and to the side, mouth opening wide towards her exposed neck. His fangs dragged their sharp tips across the smooth, sensitive flesh of the piece of meat offered up in front of him before the demon stood, leaving her in the morbid blood pool alone. Angel had left her barely hanging onto the edge of life, leaving her in the cold, dark night to die alone.
That was always the point where he woke up, the dream ending and reality once more returning. Just after she begged him to come back to her, wanting him to finish the job so she no longer needed to suffer. But he never had the chance.