A/N: The first chapter! For those of you who haven't yet read this story, keep reading the chapter because this author's note won't do much for you. If you have read this story, please read the author's note before reading this chapter.

The original first chapter, "Angels in the Shadows," was very small, provided almost no detail, and was first intended as the prologue of this story. Since I've had to include a different prologue, I've felt that revision was needed. Please note that I wrote the original of this "chapter" more than two years ago – a lot of revision was needed!

This provides all of the backstory that it needed and also gives more characterization, which I think you'll all appreciate. Also, the title makes a lot more sense now that I've played up the shadows in Angelus' thoughts down at the bottom.

THIS IS THE FIRST IN A LINE OF REVISIONS OF THE FIRST CLUSTER OF CHAPTERS.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE TIMELINE OF THIS STORY!!!!!!!: Okay, the episode "Passion" occurs sometime after Valentine's Day, so we can assume it is meant to be in April. In my story, after the events of "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" Angelus vanished for a little bit. This story takes place at the very BEGINNING of the episode "Passion" and veers into AU from there, and the events of this happen a little more than a month after Valentine's Day.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

the Passion of Angels and Demons

Chapter I

Angels in the Shadows

In the events of every life there are defining moments; in these moments every creature great and small makes decisions. Whether the moment is enormous or just a ripple in the ocean, these decisions affect everything. Looking back, Alexander Harris always knew that the largest defining moment of his young life was that night, at the Bronze, so long ago before everything changed.

Xander, as his friends called him, no matter how hard he thought about it, never knew what possessed him with the mad desire to escape to the shadows of the small balcony of the Bronze. He had needed to get away, away from the crowds, away from his friends, away from everything. That one decision had somehow affected the entire world.

888

There was nothing around Sunnydale that night to suggest anything other than normality…or as normal as anything ever got around the Hellmouth. Sunnydale, California was a small, quiet, peaceful town that just happened to be located on a center of mystical convergence where the walls between the human world and, well, Hell were very thin. That in itself should have raised alarm flags – they had all lived in Sunnydale long enough to be able to say with some authority that whenever things were quiet on the Hellmouth something of the major badness variety was about to strike.

Sunnydale, California, called by the Spanish Boca del Infierno, called by the teenagers boredom land, called by the adults 'a nice, quiet, peaceful little suburb.' In the eyes of the wretched horrors and demons that stalked the night, it was the Holy Land. In particular, Sunnydale had cornered the market with how many vampires you could stuff into one town. It was part of the ancient magic of the Hellmouth that the people of Sunnydale never noticed anything strange or out of the ordinary. They allowed themselves to be blind to it, to explain away every bump in the night with a shrug.

Sometimes Xander wondered at how stupid he'd been to not at least notice that there were twelve major cemeteries within the city limits of the town that he'd grown up in.

Xander had been one of the oblivious masses that the underworld had so greedily preyed upon for years. He'd just been your average slacking sophomore at Sunnydale High School, never noticing when students disappeared or strange stuff happened at his school. He'd never really been able to focus on it – it hadn't affected him so he couldn't really say jack about it.

And then one day he'd come to school like usual and noticed that one extremely pretty new blonde girl had transferred in from Los Angeles. Score! Her name was Buffy Summers and on top of being a pretty blonde she seemed to not only have more than half a brain but also the potential to be nice – always a plus with attractive high school girls. He'd quickly introduced himself (and just as quickly made an ass of himself), but he'd held out hope seeing as how the girl had deliberately rejected Cordelia Chase, the most pretty and popular girl in the county, in favor of hanging out with Willow Rosenberg , Xander's hugely nerdy best friend, and Jesse McNally, Xander's best guy bud since kindergarten.

That was when things had turned freaky. He'd gone to the library and asked the new British guy for a book on math that Wills had wanted him to check out to help with Trig homework (drag). Back up in the quiet, dark, and vaguely spooky book stacks, he'd heard the doors slam open behind him. Peeking out, he watched the new girl, Buffy, storm right up to the librarian and inform him that there was a dead guy in the girl's locker room who'd been sucked dry by vampires and that she didn't care.

Okay – seriously weird, but he could wonder if she was maybe asking about a book. Science fiction books were pretty cool (some of the only things Xander read voluntarily) so maybe he could lend her some of his. He was sure he had a vampire book or two somewhere in the mess that was his bedroom (note to self—clean room before inviting someone over).

That was of course when the librarian (Mr. Giles) had informed Buffy that she was "the Slayer, the one girl in all the world, the Chosen One" whose duty it was, apparently, to hunt down vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. At this point Xander was seriously wigging out and hid even further behind the shelves. Buffy had gotten into a huge argument with him about how "slaying" had wrecked her life and gotten her kicked out of school and how she was "retired" and he could go stuff himself.

She'd stormed out of the library looking like the wrath of Hell and Giles had muttered a curse and ran out after her.

Xander had deliberately put the whole thing out of his mind and went home that day, catching himself inspecting shadows and jumping at odd noises. Thoroughly freaked, Xander had thrown some clothes on and headed out to the Bronze to meet up with Willow. She'd know what to say to this crap.

The Bronze was the huge nightclub in Sunnydale (the only nightclub in Sunnydale). It was open to anyone and everyone over the age of fifteen, with a minimal cover charge. It had a bar that served both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, a small café with a surprisingly good food menu, lots of comfortable seating, a dance floor, and a small stage where they could host live bands.

That night they'd booked Sprung Monkey, which was a cool little band, so the cover charge was a couple of dollars higher. Xander had quietly raided the loose change jar to cover the cost and headed out, walking quickly and staying in lit up areas. Nothing wrong with being cautious, he'd told himself. Vampires – right, sure, he'd thought to himself contemptuously.

Only, that night when he'd gotten to the Bronze, Buffy was running outside, face flushed, clutching a sharpened stick in her hand. She'd informed him that Willow had been taken by a bad guy, and he'd joked with her about the Slayer thing. To his surprise she flipped out on him for it being the truth, and something about the horrified, haunted look in her eyes, the passion in her face…something, and he believed her enough to follow her to the nearest cemetery.

To his horror, they'd found not only Willow but Jesse as well, locked in a dusty old crypt with two strangers, a guy and a beautiful blonde woman – beautiful until she'd turned around and her face was wretched, contorted, monstrous; she was icy pale and her eyes glowed an evil yellow in her face, a mouthful of jagged fangs bared. Vampire, a voice whispered to him from the back of his mind.

Jesse and Willow were both pale, scared, and freaking, and Jesse had a nasty, bloody hicky on his neck. That was bad enough, until Buffy had calmly skewered the stranger guy (vampire) with the sharp stick, straight through the heart. It made a nasty stabbing noise and the guy gasped in shock and pain before falling to the floor…and collapsing into a pile of graveyard dust and ashes.

Xander and the others had turned and fled the crypt, screaming for help as Buffy launched into some serious kung fu on the blonde monster – but all they found were more vampires, laughing as they separated them, the pain as he was knocked unconscious for the first time in his life as a taloned fist smashed into the back of his head. Next time he came to Buffy was standing over him with Willow at her side, a vampire running away, hissing in rage, behind her.

Jesse was nowhere to be found.

That next day Giles had sat them down and told them about the world – it had once been the home of demons until somehow humans had come into the world. The humans had created the Slayer, one girl in every generation given supernatural strength, speed, and hightened senses, along with the occasional prophetic dream. Vampires were demons – people who'd been bitten and had their blood mixed. Demon hopped in and became the person: their memories, personality, subconscious, everything, but the human soul went on to its afterlife.

The part that had really scared Xander at the time was that it made sense to him, it fit and he believed every word without question because somehow he knew that there were such things as demons. So when Buffy had cut class to hunt down the vampires in the sewers to find Jesse, Xander had made his choice.

Jesse was his best friend, and no matter what you could say about Xander, he was loyal to those he loved without fault. Jesse was like his brother, and Xander wasn't about to let anything happen to him. Sure, he didn't have superpowers, sure he was just a guy, but Buffy was fast becoming a friend to him too (maybe more) and so he armed himself with a flashlight and went after her to the crypt that was (according to Buffy) where the vampires were entering the sewer tunnels from the cemetery (after Willow had easily hacked the city council's archives and pulled up an entire schematic of the underbelly of the town of Sunnydale).

He'd gone into that crypt, and he'd felt eyes on the back of his neck. He'd turned but there was no one there, that he could see, but he could feel that there were eyes on him, from somewhere in the shadows. It made him shiver and so he resolutely went towards the door in the back shadows of the crypt, where he could see it had been kicked in.

That day he'd followed Buffy until they'd found Jesse…who had turned out to not just be bait for the Slayer but also a vampire himself. Xander and Buffy had barely gotten out of there with their lives – only to find out that Giles had figured out that the vampires all served an ancient vampire king called "the Master," an extremely powerful, extremely old, and extremely evil dude who'd tried to open the Hellmouth and let the demons back in, destroying the world.

The Master had gotten stuck like a cork in a bottle and trapped underground during the earthquake of '32, thank God, so now he was stuck in a mystical prison underground. Thing was, he had a plan to get out, and by releasing him the Hellmouth would open. That night they'd set off to stop an apocalypse.

Buffy had kicked ass at the Bronze (where the vampires were gathering so some creeper could suck a bunch of blood and transfer the power to the Master) while Xander and the others had got everyone out – except that he'd heard Cordelia screaming, and he'd known.

Jesse had had a crush on Cordelia since they were all in elementary school, and he'd tried to stop the vampire from killing her. But when Jesse had stood up and looked him in the face, no matter how evil he looked, no matter how Xander knew that Jesse was dead and this was just a demon…he couldn't kill him. Because the demon was Jesse, in a weird sense – it was Jesse's thoughts and memories, his personality, just twisted with no conscience whatsoever. And Xander couldn't kill that.

In the end, Jesse had been shoved onto Xander's stake, bursting into dust in front of him, and Xander had numbly sank to the floor. The blonde woman from the crypt had tackled Giles to the floor and Xander felt a surge of rage; that was the one who'd lured Jesse to his death, bitten him in the first place. Xander had felt a bitter, vicious hatred of vampires then, that they'd taken everything from him – not only his best friend who was like his brother, but his security, his ignorance.

He'd gotten up to try and kill her when Willow had dumped a jug of holy water on the vamp and she'd screamed and sprinted out of the Bronze with her face smoking like acid.

That night they'd stopped an apocalypse but something in Xander had been changed, forever. He'd chosen to stand by Buffy, to be her friend, to help hunt down the darkness that preyed on innocents like Jesse. That defining moment had led to others, and then to others, defining him, shaping him, leading them all to this one night at the Bronze when everything was about to change.

888

Buffy, Willow and Xander were all going to the Bronze together that night, which Xander was glad for because it was another sign that Willow had forgiven him for the Love Spell debacle about a month ago, and he really needed his friends that night. He shuddered even thinking about that night so he had jumped up and led the way to the dance floor. Tonight the DJ was groovin' on a trip-hop vibe and the crowd was loving it.

Buffy's face relaxed a little and she started to lose herself in the music with them and that was a blessing in and of itself considering everything the girl was going through at the moment. Willow was still a little giggly because during patrol that night a fledgling vampire had jumped at Buffy's back and Willow had staked it – it was the first time that Willow had killed a vampire all by herself without anyone holding it down.

Cordelia, Xander's shiny new girlfriend (and wasn't that still a shocker) was out with her mother doing some quality shopping and Xander tried not to notice that both Buffy and Willow were happy about that. He had hit a strange stage with Cordy where they were spending less and less time making out and more and more time just talking. Cordelia, once you got past the self-centered princess, once you learned that her blunt and brutal honesty was actually a virtue, was a surprisingly smart, caring, and intuitive girl. He had a sneaking suspicion that he and Cordelia were on the road to bypassing boyfriend/girlfriend land and landing straight in quality-friend land.

That hadn't made it to Buffy or Willow yet, both of whom had been at the receiving end of Cordelia's verbal daggers one too many times for them to fully forgive her and count her in the Scooby Gang.

Still, thinking of Cordelia led to thinking about that night and he didn't want to do that so he didn't think about her.

Instead, he tried to lose himself in the music.

Buffy had wanted to be out, surrounded by the living, and he couldn't blame her. Buffy had met a gorgeous, mysterious older guy named Angel her first night in Sunnydale. He was on the side of good, fighting evil alongside her, warning her of impending danger. It had spun everyone on their heads when he'd turned out to be a vampire.

Angel had once been Angelus, the Scourge of Europe and quite possibly one of the most sick, twisted and evil vampires to ever walk the face of the earth. His evil had led to him killing a gypsy princess and the gypsies had sworn revenge. They'd cursed him by returning his human soul, letting the "good" Angel feel the horrors that his unleashed demonic side had done with such pleasure.

For a century Angel had vanished, the guilt driving him into the shadows. He'd come back to fight for his redemption and had fallen in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a darkly funny thing if you thought about it. Angel had proved his love for Buffy that very week she'd found out he was a vampire by doing the major no-no in vampiredom and murdering his Sire, Darla (who, as it turned out, was the seriously evil blonde who'd murdered Jesse).

There had always been something about Angel that had made Xander uneasy, though. He wrote it off to his bitterness to vampires in general and had made his dislike known, which hadn't exactly endeared him to Buffy, but they didn't talk about it much. Still, it hadn't stopped him from being driven to defend Angel from Kendra (long story) and thanking Angel for saving his life, more than once.

That was, until Buffy's disastrous seventeenth birthday, when Angel and Buffy had done the deed and they all found out that Angel's curse had a hinge – should the curse ever lead Angel to find one moment of pure happiness the curse would be snatched away as a final punishment and unleash Angelus once again on whoever had given him that happiness.

Now the evil son of a bitch was back and he was seriously bent on hurting the Scooby Gang and Buffy most of all.

Xander shuddered thinking about it all. Thinking about Angelus did that to him lately. The music wasn't working to distract him like it usually did, no matter how much he tried to lose himself in it. And he could tell that Buffy and Willow were noticing that the smile on his face was forced, that the crazed dancing was beyond his grasp just now.

He couldn't shake off the feeling that he was being watched, that obsessive, dark eyes were watching him from the shadows…

He feinted a spin just to assuage his fears and saw only shadows in the dark corners of the Bronze, where other, regular kids were making out, breaking up, living their blissfully normal lives. He tried to suppress another shiver that was making its way up his spine and sighed when he saw that Buffy was staring at him in concern.

"You okay, Xand?" Buffy asked, glancing around him to check the shadows herself. He hadn't wanted to bring her down, not tonight when she so desperately needed to pretend to be a carefree teenager. Willow had stopped dancing and was eyeing him too, her expressive green eyes lit up with worry. They'd both noticed that he wasn't acting at all like himself lately.

Xander laughed weakly, trying to pass it off as nothing, but both girls merely shared identical looks that broadcasted that they were doing that weird girl thing where they could read each other's minds. "I'm fine!" he said loudly with a falsely cheerful grin on his face. Neither of them fell for that one, either. "Seriously," he assured them, heading off the question already on Buffy's face. "I'll just go get some air up there, is all," he said, pointing towards the balcony stairs.

"Okay…" Buffy trailed off, clearly not convinced. "You want some company?"

"No, no!" he said quickly – the last thing he needed right now was to answer questions about himself. He just needed to escape. Xander wasn't prepared to answer things that he still hadn't quite figured out for himself. "You two minxes just party it up without me!" he continued, and turned to practically bolt for the blessed solitude waiting for him at the top. And the rest is silence.

888

Buffy watched Xander go, worry in her mind and her heart. She knew that there was something big and obviously worrisome wrong with her friend, but she also knew that he wouldn't reveal it to her even under torture. Xander was just that way – he would hide it from her because he wanted to protect her from even more stress than what she was dealing with now.

She didn't know sometimes whether to be amazed and thankful for his white knight tendencies or to be annoyed and worried.

"What do you think is up with him?" Buffy asked Willow, trying not to let her level of anxiety show in her voice. Willow was her best girlfriend, like a sister. Buffy had tried to convince herself that all of her friends back in Los Angeles were like that, but she knew that none of them even held half a matchstick to the bond she'd developed with Willow.

Her friend's pale, heart-shaped face was framed by lovely red hair that brought out her green eyes. Buffy knew that if Willow just allowed herself to come out of her shell she'd be a knockout, easy; the trouble was convincing Willow of this. Right now, Willow's face was pinched with worry.

Willow and Xander had been best friends since they'd been in diapers; they'd had sleepovers and worn footy pajamas together, "dated" and then "broken up" when Xander had stolen her Barbie. They'd formed the "We Hate Cordelia" club together and Willow had nurtured a huge torch for Xander for years, which Xander hadn't noticed because Willow was like a sister to him. They were closer than anyone, and Buffy knew that anything that hurt Xander would knife through Willow's heart, and vice versa.

"I don't know," Willow said after a moment. "This isn't like Xander at all…he just looks so worried." Xander was usually a very unworried sort of person; he was normally the one cracking the dumb jokes in the face of mortal danger.

"We're gonna have to find out," Buffy said decisively. Whether Xander wanted to protect her or not, she was the Slayer, and she could deal with whatever it was. She needed her friends by her side now more than ever and she didn't want to think what it'd be like to have to deal with Angel without Xander and his jokes holding her up, supporting her.

However, she couldn't sense anything off in the Bronze tonight…well, more than what was off with her, but that was another matter – and she needed to cut loose a little tonight before tackling the big issues tomorrow. She knew the value of not trying to take care of everything in one night. That way led to more issues than Time magazine and she wanted none of it.

"Come on," the Slayer said decisively, and grabbed Willow's hand, leading her friend into the crowd to try and lose herself in the music once more.

888

The shadows were a place that he was comfortable in. If you knew how to use shadows they could eat you up, take you anywhere – they were the true mystery of night because shadows occurred in the daytime. He smelled the spice of the night and the scent of wild, aroused human blood boiling in this little kingdom of humanity and he wanted to slice through it like a scythe and drink his fill.

Angelus smirked to himself as he thought of all that wild human blood, hot with arousal, fear, terror, hatred, love, life burning down his being and feeding the demon within. But he could master that demon as he had mastered everything else. He could look across the dance floor at the Slayer, oblivious to him, and feel the dull pangs of hatred and other emotions that had once filled him at the sight of her, until they had been replaced.

She didn't have a clue he was here, which was good. She could usually sense him, in particular; he remembered nights spent in these very shadows, filled with the disgusting essence of humanity called a soul, watching the circle of Slayer and friends dancing and wanting more than anything to join them, to be one of them. He fought the urge to spit at the thought of those days – the soul was gone and the true Angel was back.

His prey had broken off from his mighty protector, making Angelus' job even easier. Perhaps the boy could sense him – the boy was already attuned to him. The thought of that sent a shiver of excitement down his spine. He could feel this falling into place so easily, and he felt the rightness of his plan. He thought of a similar time when he had hid in the shadows, watching the boy break into an ancient crypt and fearlessly follow the Slayer to help his friends.

He remembered watching that boy and thinking what it would be like to have that loyalty for himself and all the dark yearnings that had emerged. Angel the Soul had shuddered in disgust at himself while Angelus the Demon had howled to be free as he had for a century now. Even then Xander had been able to sense him in the shadows.

Angelus pulled himself out of his musings. It was time – time to start and end this, all at once, and that thought filled him with excitement. He melted deeper into the shadows where a lowly minion vampire bowed and bared his neck in respect for his master. Angelus leaned down and whispered in his ear, "Get them ready – you know what to do."

The minion nodded, eager to please his master, but Angelus caught him around the throat. He could smell the fear-stink of the lower demon and it filled him with disgust. "Remember – if anything goes wrong this night, I will torture you to your final death, and by the time I'm finished with you, you won't be able to form words," he snarled viciously, his true vampiric face shining forth.

The minion cowered away from him, nodding frantically, and ran to assemble Angelus' forces. Assured that the idiot would follow his commands to the letter, if only out of a sense of self-preservation, Angelus looked once again at the Slayer out on the dance floor. For a moment he felt all the old emotions again – hatred, lust, bloodlust. But she no longer held the center of his universe.

He allowed a predatorily possessive smile to slip across his sensuously handsome face as he slowly walked up the stairs to the balcony level of the Bronze, his eyes lighting as he saw Xander Harris standing alone, as if waiting for him. His demon roaring in triumph, Angelus moved forward.

A/N: Jeeze, when I started this I underestimated how much help this chapter needed! Well, I'm feeling much more accomplished now than when I originally had this idea! In any case, if you haven't read the rest of the story yet I hope you decide to, and if you have I hope you enjoy this better.

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So, until next time – thanks for taking the time!

Sincerely, PyroPadawan.