FYI: THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE WILL BE LONG! Consider yourselves warned.

A/N: Okay, so I really don't make promises that I don't intend to keep at some point, and I just realized that I had given that chapter update without giving the final play list like I had promised. So:

The Soundtrack to Passion XV is:

"The Phantom of the Opera" - Emmy Rossum & Gerald Butler (from the movie, not the musical)

"Everything Burns" - Anastacia (Featuring Ben Moody)

"All Around Me" - Flyleaf

"I Hate Everything About You" - Three Days Grace

"Your Disease" - Saliva

"Bring Me to Life" - Evanescence

"I'm Not Dead" - Pink

"Awakening" - The Damning Well (this didn't make it into the chapter, but I listened to it for the last bit while I wrote it).

And, just so you have a peak into my insane brain, I listen to music incessantly. I can't go a day without listening to something; seriously, I tried, and I broke before two in the afternoon. So when I set out to write this, naturally I made a play list. I shaved it down to the eighty minutes required for one CD, so in case any of you are interested, this is the soundtrack for the first fifteen chapters of Passion - download it!

the Passion of Angels and Demons Soundtrack Part I

Snow White Queen - Evanescence

Losing Grip - Avril Lavigne

All Around Me - Flyleaf

With You Reanimation Remix - Linkin Park

Pieces of a Dream - Anastacia

Missing "Anywhere But Home" Bonus Track - Evanescence

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Philistine

24 - Jem

I'm Not Dead - Pink

Believe - Disturbed

Like You - Evanescence

See Through - Megan McCauley

A Forrest - Lunar Click

Blood (Chocolate Version) - Sparklemotion

The Killing Moon - The Distants

Evil Angel - Breaking Benjamin

Overfire - THC

The Car Chase - James Horner

Everything Burns - Anastacia (Featuring Ben Moody)

Mad World Alternate Mix - Donnie Darko Soundtrack Bonus Track - Gary Jules

One note: "The Car Chase" comes from the fantastic movie A Beautiful Mind - it's the theme that plays when Nash begins to fall victim to his schizophrenia. It's a very creepy and emotive piece and it's what plays in my head whenever Xander's dark side starts to rear its hidden head…Also, the song that plays during the actual Buffy episode "Passion" is called "Never an Easy Way" by Morcheeba, and it's a very good song (if you're into trip-hop) - the only reason it didn't make it onto the soundtrack is because it's like six and a half minutes long.

Now that I'm starting on the second leg of this epic life-devouring piece, I'll be making a second soundtrack that'll fit in for goddess knows how long.

NOTE ON THE SET UP OF THE STORY: Okay, so this thing is too long. It's really this grand thing that sweeps along in three parts, so that's how I've decided to play it. The Passion of Angels and Demons will be the first part of a three part saga, so after another bunch of chapters, don't be surprised if the chapter ended on a cliffhanger and the story has been changed to complete. I'm not leaving you hanging, I'm just working on getting the second part out there.

ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I've said this before, and I'll say it again. A new fan, davinci, left me a review wondering if I have this on the Live Journal community xangel. The answer is no because I don't have a live journal. It's complicated to work and I'm really not as techno-savvy as I like to appear. I do, however, constantly read everything on xangel and it was the first Xander/Angel slash site I had ever found. If anyone: repeat, ANYONE wants to pimp this thing out over there or find some way to link it, I'd be eternally grateful to have this thing on another site.

BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY PROGRAMMED AUTHOR'S NOTE.

A/N: This has been a fantastic experience to write, even if it is wearing out my brain. The thing that makes it all worthwhile is the reviews, the addition to lists of favorites/author alerts, and the encouragement to finish. I love this story, and I love this pairing, and I am committed to finishing it.

Now, a note on this chapter: it's going to be much shorter than the last one, but it is important as it sets up the next chapter. This is going to be a sort of stream of conscious jump from one character to the next as they look at Xander's dramatic reappearance in the library and their thoughts on the night before. The battle that I sort of glossed over at the end will be fleshed out, and you'll see exactly what happened at the factory. For those of you who only read this for Angelus, I am not sure if he'll make his reappearance in this chapter or not. But, think about it: Buffy and the gang beat the shit out of him - give him a little R&R, will ya?

And I do have one last important note: for those of you who are not fans of Buffy (the character), well, I am. True, especially in the last season, she can step way out of line, but for the most part I think she's a smart, caring, brave character who keeps fighting despite the mountain of shit that the Hellmouth vomits on her daily. I really don't agree with fics that participate in Buffy Bashing or make everyone very OOC just so that they can justify Buffy Bashing. I won't be doing that in this fic, ever, so don't look for it. No offense.

As always, this chapter is dedicated to my readers. You guys are the reason writers write. Thank you all.

the Passion of Angels and Demons

Chapter XVI

Collapsis

BUFFY

When Xander reappeared, I think that I collapsed. I remember sinking to the floor and just staring at his unconscious body without a word. Months. Months of not seeing, not knowing, of suspicions and pain and guilt, and here he was, asking for my help. Months. I started shaking at that point. I'd built a wall around myself since his disappearance, a necessary icy distance that I'd had to use as a defense against the world. I was the Slayer, and Angel, my biggest mistake, was running around using my inability to kill him as a cover for kidnapping one of my best friends.

Clearly my emotions had been getting the best of me. Giles had been worried, of course; I had stopped acting like me and started acting more like Kendra. He tried to hide it when I poured myself into my training, when all I wanted to read were books on demons where once I had only wanted to shop and to read Cosmo. But where had that gotten me? Whatever I could do to make myself strong, to keep my friends alive and animals like Angelus dead, I would do. I had committed myself to killing Buffy and keeping only the Slayer alive.

Funny how much it hurt to have Xander's face break that wall of ice. Funny how much it hurt to feel again. Feel how much it had hurt to attack Angelus as I had last night. How much it hurt to see the enormous bruises and injuries indicative of a severe beating marking Xander's once-golden and happy face. I had concentrated so hard on making myself strong enough to get Xander back that I had never actually thought what would happen when I did get him back. Angel had once asked me, in a happier time, what I thought of my future. All I could answer him at the time was that I saw him.

Thinking like that led to…well, apparently with the ice gone I had lost the ability to cynically analyze that night. Now all there was was the pain. Funny, how seeing Xander could fill me with such joy and such sorrow, all at once. Maybe I was getting a taste of what being an adult was, at that point. I would think later how awful it was in today's world how sorrow was the only way to grow up - otherwise you still stupidly assume that grown-ups were never children and Peter Pan actually existed.

You never question things like that when you're a kid. You can live forever, and no one ever dies, and everyone can just fly away to Never Never Land and be alright. God is up in Heaven and there is no pain, and He…She, whatever, always has Her eye on you. I remember thinking in that moment that I would have given anything to feel like that again.

Instead I threw my feelings into that black corner of my mind and rushed forward, Slayer first, and picked Xander's surprisingly heavy body up and laid him on top of the library table, sweeping the lamps to the floor. Snyder could pay for them later.

I had to lay him on his left side, because his right arm looked badly broken. But I couldn't lay him on his back, because there were huge black fucking wings that had broken out of his back and there was blood trickling out of the cracks they'd ripped in Xander's back. Okay. Xander has wings. Deal and move on.

He had broken ribs and bruises all over his face and body, and his pants (Angelus' pants, I noted indifferently) were ripped and singed from the fire. Wings or not, we needed to get him medical attention, and fast. "Giles," I started, turning to him. He nodded tersely, not an emotion showing on his face. Giles had been becoming more and more like the Ripper we had all briefly and unpleasantly been introduced to when Ethan Rayne had come back to town. I also had learned exactly how much Giles had come to regard all of us as his children. He'd do anything to take care of us - if there was any way to heal Xander, Giles would find it.

I could trust him to do that. And then…it was like the weight of the world landed on my shoulders as it all seemed to hit me in one awful moment. My legs buckled and I slumped into a chair and finally, finally started sobbing as I had not allowed myself for three and a half months.

GILES

I watched Buffy crumple and I couldn't do anything about it. Not that if I could do anything to stop it I would; she'd been holding this back for a quarter of a year, and if she didn't get it out now, she likely would bottle it up till it exploded at a moment that might get her killed. When Willow started for Buffy, I motioned her back. The redhead nodded slightly, her lips quivering as she looked at Xander. Willow had come through this gauntlet with an extraordinary show of strength that I had not credited her for. She had tried as hard as she could to step into Xander's absence and take care of the gang, no matter her youth.

These young people had been through far too much.

I finally turned and looked at Xander, allowing myself to catalogue his injuries. With each that I saw, my rage grew until my eyes blurred with moisture. Angelus had much to answer for - too much. These children were like my children; I'd cared for them and shepherded them and watched them as time and again they banded together and fought the forces of darkness by choice, because they felt it was the right thing to do. This demon, this creature had captured the best of each of them when he'd taken Xander and used it to hurt them.

I knew at that moment fully and completely that if Buffy did not kill Angelus, I would, and I would do it gladly. For all that he'd done to Buffy, to Jenny, to Xander, to every innocent that he met and the torture that he had caused, the misery. True, all vampires caused suffering, but Angelus was a true torturer; he caused more grief and misery than any demon and he took more pleasure in it than man or beast could remember.

Willow had said when Xander disappeared that he had gone willingly - I had to wonder at that moment more than ever what the conniving demon had told this innocent, harmless, and indeed naïve boy to make him go in the first place. I looked at the wings that Xander was sporting, and thought of the eerie color that had faded from Xander's normal chocolatey eyes when he'd seen us. What the hell did Angelus do to you? I thought agonizingly.

CORDELIA

Some say that with suffering comes wisdom. I say, bullshit. Wisdom is something you earn by learning from your mistakes. With suffering comes sorrow, and with sorrow comes self-knowledge. I still sometimes look back on my life before Buffy came to Sunnydale and think Good God - was that me? I'd had my whole life mapped out for me, you know? Be young and pretty and rich forever, and marry some young handsome rich guy, and have beautiful rich children - did I mention rich? I'd be happy.

Then there had been vampires, and then I'd started to get this annoying Daphne complex and get kidnapped once every other week. Only, instead of Prince Charming coming to my rescue, I had Buffy, this irritating little pretty blonde that somehow in her honesty was everything that I wasn't. Herself. True, I have a habit of blunt honesty - what's the point of subtlety, really? If you're going to say something to someone, you can at least have the respect and self-respect to say what you mean to their face instead of talking behind their back like a cowardly bitch.

I may be a rich bitch, but I'm not a coward.

So sure, I started to help to fight the good fight. Honestly, at that point in my life, I had no idea why I was helping these total freakazoids fight their creepy night battles. Now I know better. Now I know that I was looking for love, in the way that I looked for it by campaigning so hard to be the most popular girl…well, ever (behold my success, I must say). Some little part of me had stood up and said I want to do the right thing and help people. And then maybe I'll be something other than Cordelia Chase, Sunnydale High School Queen. Maybe then I'd be something more like Cordelia Chase extraordinaire. Maybe I'd actually earn respect instead of enamourment. If that's even a word. Fuck it, I said it and that makes it a word.

So then, of course, in choosing (subconsciously - yes, I know what that word means, and thank you and fuck you Freud for enlightening me on mommy and daddy issues) to fight for truth and all that good crap, I started to actually notice people. Like how all of my 'friends' are fakes who only do what I do because they wish that they were as cool as me (as if, Harmony, you completely unoriginal little kowtowing slut), and how all of Buffy's friends were actually more like her family because they'd all die for each other because of love.

So yeah, sometimes I'm a little jealous of Bitchy the Vampire Layer. Sue me.

So, just to follow the shit path, I started to notice Xander Harris. Like no matter how immature he was he would always tell you the truth because that's what he thought was right. Like no matter how many crimes he committed against the fashion world as a whole, he had the cutest puppy-dog eyes of doom look ever. And then I kissed him, and I found out that his mouth is good at a lot of things. Thank god I never kissed him again after that, because I started to notice how he looked at Angel, after that, and I realized that a) Xander was probably closeted gay, and lusting after his best friend's boyfriend (But then again, if he was gay, who could resist ogling Angel? Come on now, in all honesty, no one deserves to that good-looking) and b) that I had no desire to use this knowledge against him, as I might once have. I realized that I would have felt bad about it.

Self-awareness comes slowly, even for someone as truly superior as me (and no, I'm not being superficial at all: I am the Queen. It's just who I am, and since the crown does fit, just shut and listen), and when I started to notice that far from being a useless nerd, Willow was actually a hidden beauty with a talent for cheering you up when you didn't want to be cheery. And that Oz…well, Oz had always been cool in a weird Zen sort of way.

It was after Xander had vanished and it was likely that Buffy's ex-lover who'd turned evil after she'd lost her virginity to him had taken Xander, that I realized that I felt truly sorry for Buffy. And that I was her friend. And that I was a Scooby. At one point this might have freaked me out, but at that moment I had realized that I had actual friends for the first time in my life. So when a vampire came at Willow with a knife I threw her out of the way and ended up in the hospital with a nick on my neck.

Willow still goes out of her way to talk to me every day - like maybe she felt like she had to pay me back for it by being more of my friend. But that was okay with me, because I knew that she was trying to hold the gang together after Xander…and I did all that I could to help her. So when a vampire had come up to my house one night about three days before we got Xander back and said she wanted Angelus gone, I took her at her word and got the information out.

And now Xander was laying in something like a coma with big fucking wings (I'd say this was freaky, because it so totally was, but he had attractive wings, for all of that - they were huge and a soft ashy grey color, the color of a sky right after a long, cooling thunderstorm, and were made up of…well, I don't know if they're feathers, but they looked soft) coming out of his back and enough injuries to make Florence Nightingale wince.

But since I know that you're all hanging off of my every word, you'll notice how I had said that I was suddenly noticing things.

I wondered if I was the only one that heard him whisper "Angelus" right before he passed out.

WILLOW

We'd all grown up. We'd all become something different. A family forged together by love and battle and desperation. We'd accepted Cordelia (and how weird was that, still, after three months?) in after Xander was taken, but it hadn't been an occasion of joy like it should have been. No one seemed to notice me walk behind the counter and sink underneath it. Buffy was sobbing loudly (thank the Goddess; she hadn't let herself since it had happened) enough that I knew my own tears could be hidden.

The whole hell of the thing was that I could figure out if I was crying from happiness or exhaustion or fear at what Xander had become. I'd known something was in the library when we'd come back after Oz had gone home to patch up his arm, because I'd felt it. I felt the air bend to its will, I felt power like nothing I'd ever imagined feeling before. I knew also that the entire Underworld of Sunnydale and perhaps beyond had felt it too. It was scary and transcendent all at the same time.

And it was coming out of my best friend, my brother growing up.

Goddess, we'd fought so hard to find him, to bring him back. We'd grown up in a matter of weeks instead of years, and there had been nothing to keep us together but our own determination. And to have it end like this? When the factory had exploded, we'd all been so sure that he was gone. None of us had said anything, we'd only left to lick our wounds and to try and figure out a way to kill Angelus, just to make sure. Truthfully, I wasn't sure that Buffy would be able to handle killing Angelus, no matter how icy she'd made herself.

But Buffy wasn't the only one who'd grown so numb these months. We all had. I had had to hack the school's computers and give Buffy passing grades in all her classes to make sure that she wasn't held back a year because she was pouring so much into her training. The old me would have tried to get her to study as well. But I was something, someone else now. I had to be. I had to be strong. Because just because we had Xander back did not, in any sense of the word, mean that this was over. Whatever it was that Xander had…become needed to be dealt with. And I was worried that I wouldn't have the strength to stand when it was, finally, over.

ANGELUS

I sat on my throne, of sorts, and stared down at what was left of my kingdom. And I stared at the one that had brought it down.

Jesse stood alone, despite the fact that she was missing half of an arm and all of her hair. She looked like she'd been put through something that even I wouldn't have been capable of putting her through. I couldn't summon the anger that should be there, oddly enough. I felt only ice. Xander was gone. My boy, my Claimed, my own, was gone. And here she stood, the one that had started it all.

Maybe it was that twinge of conscience that Xander had somehow managed to inject into my mind that made me feel sorry for her, this creature that had wanted his love so desperately and had concocted a scheme worthy of Darla to get it. Ultimately, if she'd launched her plan a day earlier, it probably would have worked. It had been her idea to feed Lucien a vampiric aphrodisiac, and, whilst he was distracted by a newly made fledgling that Jesse had made in secret, she would lead Xander down to where the human pets were kept. When my boy saw the humans that I kept, some of them I'd enjoyed at times, he would naturally grow so horrified and betrayed that he'd run as far away as possible. Maybe even kill himself.

The fact of the matter was that it would have worked, had Xander not exploded in a way she had no way of foreseeing. So here she stood, calmly awaiting my judgment. True, I felt sorry for her in a way I had not been expecting. But she had taken away my boy. I turned to the three minions I had left.

"Take her out and stake her to the ground, that she may watch her final sunrise." It was the ceremonial way that one killed one's greatest enemies, and it was the last respect I could afford her. Maybe in another time I could have kept her. She didn't even struggle, to her credit.

Spike and Drusilla stepped out of the shadows, awaiting my orders - though I had none. Both were burned and needed to be healed. There was nothing else for it. We all needed to rest and recuperate. And then I would launch my counterattack against the Slayer. But what the hell had happened?

For it was the last stroke of genius to Jesse's plan that had proven my undoing. Buffy had become something that I had not expected. I am a careful planner by nature; something that gives me an edge over most run-of-the-mill demons. Every move I make against an enemy I make with the weight one gives to a chess piece. So when I had started to psychologically attack Buffy, I had carefully calculated exactly how much stress I could place on a stronger-then-most Slayer's mind before it snapped and became focused on my destruction.

But when I had become enthralled with Xander…I had judged what he was doing to me and tried to keep it at bay. I had forgotten what the lack of his presence would do to the Slayer's gang. And apparently it had forged them into a weapon that had slammed into me from a front that I had not been aware of.

When a minion, some nameless fledge that still had dirt on its funeral outfit that it had never bothered to change, had come bursting into the hall of the factory, screeching "The Slayer is coming! She's killed three already!" I had leapt to my feet.

"All of you with me!"

Foolish, of course, but exactly what Jesse had been counting on. I was still weakened from the ceremony, and had had to separate myself from Xander for fear of screwing up the spell. It had killed me, of course; I'd heard my boy's cries from the chamber in both my ears and my heart. So, already on edge, I'd raced into a fight to try and fight Xander out of my mind. This would be easy, I told myself.

What a fool I was.

I found them about a half a mile from the factory, and watched Buffy brutally dust two more vampires as the whole group rounded a corner to head deeper toward the factory. I sent ten to attack from the front whilst I led a cadre of fourteen from the rear. The Scooby Gang had pulled itself to a halt, pulling out various weapons as they stood their ground.

"Ah, Buff…I know that you haven't had it so good since I left, but this is borderline stalking. I'm worried," I taunted from behind her. Naturally, I hoped to engage her in banter as she tried to attack. Instead, she'd turned around.

"A dildo would have been better than that," she said coldly. In fact, her entire aura radiated ice that matched the bitter fury in her eyes as I realized that the Scoobies had formed a protective circle around Willow. The witch.

"Stop her!" I roared, but it was a little too late. The witch straightened holding something that I could not bear to look at, that burned like…the sun. She was using Kraus' Sun Spell! "Run!" I screamed, but it was too late. She launched it at my front line like it was a battering ram all on its own, which it may as well have been. She fell to her feet, depleted, but she'd achieved Buffy's goal. All ten screamed in pain and fear and god knows what as they exploded in a fiery rain of ashes.

"NOW!" Buffy screamed, and launched herself toward me with murder in her eyes and nothing else. Cordelia rounded from behind Giles and without hesitation launched a bottle of Hell-Fire at the nearest vampire, burning it to cinders as Giles swung an axe and beheaded my biggest, Aaron. Buffy kicked two others out of her way to throw a punch, which I dodged, and she - expecting my move, somehow - kicked me in the face as I turned away and slammed a hunting knife into my back. When I went down, it freed her up to slay two more and have Oz take out another one with his crossbow.

I had, what, five left? I was down, wounded, and she pounced on me like a wild animal. The torture that that girl rained on me was…unbelievable. I managed to get away from them by pure luck. Racing toward that factory, all I could think of was Xander. And yet if I'd managed to think of anything else, I might have felt the wave of power that exploded. The sky darkened as if it had been bruised by an angry god, and lightning fell down in a wave from the angry sky. Twelve bolts hit the factory, all at once, lighting it up for one second like a Christmas toy. And then it had exploded, fire tinged with the blue of burning ozone slamming into me and tossing me thirty feet to land in an abandoned building.

That may have saved my life, but when I'd emerged to stare at the ruin of my fortress and what had surely held Xander's ruined body, I almost wished that I could have died. Instead I followed my senses and found Spike and Drusilla, who were mangled but thankfully alive, and I'd gathered the two or three vampires that I had left and ran like a coward. And now here I was, in some dank cave outside of Sunnydale, watching my enemy and one-time paramour being taken out to burn.

I would have Buffy's head on a wall for eternity, and the bodies of her compatriots to show all that no Slayer crossed me. Ever.

JENNY

I stared in shock at what was left of Xander on the library table through a window. I had tried to ignore the burst of power. I had tried to pretend that it wasn't what it was. But I couldn't. My teacher had been proven right. Fighting down tears at the betrayal that I knew I would have to make, again, I ran from the library as fast as I could.

I knew now that this was my destiny: to betray my friends and lover, over and over again. And somehow, hopefully, save the world while I was at it.

A/N: Okey-day! So two chapters in two days, so I hope you guys won't be too offended when the next chapter is longer and takes longer to post. But I do feel sorry for Jenny - it's really not her fault. Not that I'll tell you what's gonna happen next, because that would ruin the cliffhanger! HAH!

Seriously, though, I got my first three reviews on the update at like three in the morning, so it means a lot to me that fans want to read it that early in the morning. I hope that you guys are liking the ride, because it's gonna start getting faster!