Chapter I: The calm before the storm.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004.
The beginning of the end...
The night breeze is chilling.
Wesley's been standing by the window for nearly an hour, calmly looking over the L.A. skyline. The misty sky seems darker than usual. He takes a deep breath and scratches his beard as he drinks from a mug. The warm liquid tumbles down the insides of his throat, slowly burning the walls. Time is running out and he's already late. He sets the cup on top of a nearby drawer. It reads "World's #1 Physicist" in large, bold letters, with little pink-colored hearts floating around the words. A small reminder of what he has lost. He turns back towards the streets outside and rubs his eyes forcefully. He takes another deep breath and turns towards the bed at the other side of the room. He picks up his gun, cocks it, and calmly accommodates it in its holster.
He takes a few steps away from the window towards the center of the room and picks his jacket from the bed. As he puts it on his eyes dart rapidly towards every direction in the room, taking in every minute detail of his surroundings as if he would never lay eyes upon it again. He walks towards the door and opens it slowly; doubt suddenly stays his hand. Then, quickly overcoming his hesitation, he turns off the lights and walks out of the room.
Inside the CEO's office of the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart seven warriors lie in silence. Fear grips their throats. Nausea and anxiety is beginning to claim some of them. They're uncertain, and even though the biggest spectacle of their lives is about to begin, they fight the urge to explode growing in their insides. Nobody speaks. Nobody moves.
Angel's sitting on the far left corner of his desk. He quietly observes the mountains of light stretching outside his windows while he strokes his chin. He ponders in silence. Thinking. Calculating. He knows his companions are morbidly frightened; shaken to their very core. All but one.
He turns towards them. They're scattered across the office. Each trapped in their very personal corner of Hell. They all have made their decision. It had been very simple for them the very first time he told them. Their lives in exchange of a little more light in the Universe.
Death, however, is not the cause of their fear. What frightens them is the possibility that they might fail before they land the first blow. Angel knows this, yet he feels it necessary to know that they are not going to leave him. That all of them will fight nightmares without hesitation, fully comprehending what they will be leaving behind. That they will bleed with him willingly for eternity in order to fight for his ideal, even if only for just a moment. And his hope that, somehow after his body turns to ashes, his example will be followed and the war will continue to be waged.
Their silence comforts him.
Behind Angel, Spike pulls his feet from Angel's desk and pushes himself forward on his seat. He arches his back and a few bones crack softly then leans forward again and starts to clean the dirt under his fingernails. He's perhaps the least afraid of them. At the very least, he doesn't seem exhibit any traits of fear. Just cleaning his fingernails.
Beside Spike, Lindsey McDonald's reclined in his seat. His long brown hair tied together in a neat ponytail, he clutches a beer bottle in his left hand. He leans forward, puts the bottle on the floor and rolls up his sleeves. He picks it up and drains it from its remains. He tells himself that it'll soon begin, and once it does every piece will fall right were it belongs. All he has to do is wait.
The usually charismatic Lorne stands sorrowful by the door. He holds a half-empty Sea-Breeze in his hand. He looks at Angel by the windows then takes a swig from his drink. He can already feel the bottom of the glass quickly approaching. He stares at it. He knows he is doing the right thing. His faith in Angel remains unwavering, despite losing his faith everything else. He only wishes they could just get it over with quickly.
Harmony's sitting idly by in the couch near the back of the office. She's perhaps the one most obviously worried. She looks at Gunn beside her and sees him staring directly at his shoelaces. His legs outstretched on top of the small coffee table in front of the couch and his arms folded neatly unto each other across his chest, he's completely lost in thought.
She feels she shouldn't be here, but Lord knows this is the only place she can be.
Illyria is, perhaps, the most intriguing of them all. Seemingly unconcerned with the gravity of the situation. She's been standing in the same corner for nearly an hour, discretely staring at the elevator. They all notice it, but none seem to be concerned by it.
Waiting. Just waiting.
The elevator ride is taking far longer than usual. The anticipation's causing him to lose focus. His eyes fall over his weapon. Single barrel shotgun; seven shells allocated inside. He stares at the numbers in the elevator as they spring to life and die again, slowly marching upwards. Oddly, he feels nervous. He thought he had banished those feelings from his system.
Never seems to be the case though.
The door opens in the lobby. He steps out of the elevator and walks directly towards Angel's office, stepping over shards of broken glass, wood and cement. The atmosphere is dreadful, almost paralyzing. The walls are dented. The reception desk is broken in half. The staircase opposite the elevators is missing several sets of steps. A large column is shattered on the floor, while another is riddled with holes. Pools of drying blood are collected in several places, while ambiguous patterns of blood are splattered across the walls.
The place has never felt colder or emptier. Like a life-sucking vacuum.
He walks into Angel's office and sees everybody staring at him. He moves calmly towards Angel and stands beside him. "You're ready," Angel says without turning his gaze from the windows.
"Yes," Wesley responds sharply.
"Good. Let's get this over with."
Angel walks over behind his desk and, hesitating for a moment, grabs the large samurai sword with both hands from its resting place. He pulls the blade and takes a moment to carefully examine it. Then setting the sheath on the desk he moves around it towards the large doors leading to the conference room.
"All right, everybody," he says as he walks past them, "put on your game faces." They all stand up grasping desperately to their insurance. Spike and Lindsey each are holding broadswords. Charles Gunn clings to his axe with both hands. Krevlornswath never was much of a fighter, but the crossbow he clutches suddenly feels like another fully-functional, though somewhat unwanted appendage. Harmony Kendall carries an assault rifle. She holds it close to her heart, as if it contained powers that protect her.
Angel pulls open the doors and walks in. The doors leading to the lobby are shattered into splinters. The large conference table, though, is missing. A large opening in the windows to their right seems to be an indication that at some point in time it somehow must have been thrown down into the streets below.
Their attention, however, isn't focused on the chaos that erupted in the small room, yet on the man hanging by his arms on chains clinging to the ceiling. Blood drips from his brutally beaten face. His legs drooping on the floor, broken. He's drained. Beaten beyond recognition and disgraced.
Powerless.
Angel approaches him slowly, his feet crunching the broken glass scattered across the floor loudly. The man lifts his head and trembles fiercely, fighting with every dying breath in his body to break free of his bonds. Angel leans close to the bloodied man's face, pulls his katana and stabs him in the stomach. He shrieks uncontrollably with pain, spitting mouthfuls of blood. Angel twists the hilt of the sword and the shrieking turns to blood-curdling screams. A smirk suddenly appears in Angel's lips, but just as quickly he dismisses it. He puts his free hand inside the pocket of his coat and produces a tape recorder.
"Stings, doesn't it?" he asks in a whisper. The man continues to scream wildly. "Want me to stop?" Angel twists with even more pressure until the man chokes and vomits. He stops and listens closely. A whimpering hiss is discernible coming from his lips. Angel pulls out the katana and swings it to his side. Blood splatters on the floor across a line and the bloodied man grunts loudly from the shock.
He kneels before the bleeding man, presses the record button on the tape recorder and holds it close to his mouth. "Sing to me, birdie," Angel finally says.
The man looks at him. He turns his head away from him a bit and spits another mouthful of blood. He leans his head over the recorder and whispers into the microphone in an indiscernible low wailing. Once he finishes he looks back at Angel, who, in turn, puts the recorder back in one of the pockets inside his coat.
Angel stands back up and cracks open the shackles holding the beaten man to the ceiling. His body tumbles down almost lifeless. "Thank you, Marcus," he says in a sharp tone. "Be seeing you."
They walk out of the conference room leaving Hamilton's beaten body laying there. Once back inside the main office they take turns glancing at each other uncomfortably.
Silence befalls them for a moment.
"How do you figure he got those chains hooked to the roof like that on such short notice?" Harmony says cringing to no one in particular.
They all look up to her as if shocked by the sudden break in the silence that had absorbed them. "Sorry," she says in a low quivering voice. "Not the time."
Angel turns towards them. "Anything anybody wants to say before we go?" he says quietly.
They all look at him somewhat surprised. They had become so immersed in their fear and dread that for a moment every single thought they processed gave them a horrifying feeling of a sword being rammed through their chest continually.
However, nobody speaks.
"I know you're scared," he begins. "I know. Because I am too. Odds are we won't live through the night. No new sunrise; no tomorrow. That before we even take the first hit, they'll overpower us. And before we realize it, we are gone. I know none of you want to hear this, I know you dread it more than anything, so I'll only say it one more time: we will suffer till our last breath, and we will take as many of them as we can down with us.
"I asked you all before to be absolutely sure of what you were going to do. That if you walked in through that door tonight you probably would never set foot out of this building again. Your lives. Everything you are. Everything you can be. That's what you're giving up. Think of all the things you'll never get to do, because once we walk into that elevator it's over.
"So I'm gonna ask you all again one last time. Harmony?"
Her face turns dreadfully pale, as if the nature of her condition was desperately clawing itself free from the large amount of make-up trying to cover it.
He looks at her with a sharp stare. "Are you in or out?"
Harmony lowers her head, shying away from eye contact.
"Lorne?" he asks turning his gaze towards him.
Lorne sighs. "This has been an exceptionally difficult year for me, for all of us," he says. "Banner, you could say it was. So I'm thinking: dirt-nap possibly not such a bad thing after all."
"You're in?" Angel asks reassuringly.
"I've always wanted to be the one to sing my own swan song."
Angel nods approvingly, then moves on: "Illyria?"
He notices her piercing eyes already on him as he meets them. "I have no ties left to this life," she says frankly. "Everything I was is but an echo lost to me in streams of time. But my life is my own. I was asked before and I shall answer in kind to you as well: I shall join your crusade, half-breed, and I will lay my earthly remains to rest amongst the scattered ashes of my enemies."
"Thank you, Highness," responds Angel quietly. Wesley looks at her and as her eyes move to meet his, he turns his sight away towards Angel again.
"Gunn?" he asks next.
"I'm here, aren't I?" he responds.
"Spike?" he says turning towards him.
"What, leave and let you take home the glory?" he scoffs with a smile. "Not bloody likely, Liam."
Angel looks towards Lindsey.
"Here to do my part, big guy," he answers in a very hushed tone.
Angel doesn't respond. He turns towards Wesley then starts to look at each of their faces in turn. "Thank you," he says, then almost in a whisper: "All of you."
They remain quiet for a few seconds. A strange, immobilizing calm washes over them and soothes their pain in these moments. Then something unexpected happens. A smile of contentment suddenly comes across Gunn's face.
"What?" asks Angel quietly.
"Nothing, just," he says then, pausing, he loses himself in his thoughts for a moment until, "the good fight," he finishes resolutely. "This is it. Isn't it?"
Angel nods in response.
"I mean, I always knew what it meant, but now it's-- This is important, and we're here. We're all making it happen. It's, uh, it's--"
"Overwhelming," interjects Wesley.
"Yeah," he agrees quietly.
Angel takes a long look into their faces and he smiles. They are his reason to fight. It's their mission; together.
Spike, however, looks less at ease than the rest. He clears his throat slightly. "So, shall we?" he says.
Angel turns to him, still smiling somewhat. "Yeah," he says simply. "Let's go."
They proceed out of the office towards the elevators led by Angel, followed closely by Wesley, Spike, Gunn, Illyria, Lindsey and Lorne coming at the rear. Spike calls an elevator and the door slides open immediately. Then, with a deep breath, they all step inside.
Angel nods to Gunn who, reluctantly at first, presses several buttons in non-sequential order. A large white button materializes above the others shortly thereafter. Gunn steps aside and cedes the moment to Angel who presses the button lightly with his forefinger. Suddenly the elevator is bathed in a magnificent white light that engulfs their bodies, slowly devouring the elevator and everything in it.