"What do you mean?" asked Wesley, frowning.
"The curse that binds my soul to my body is an instrument of revenge. I was supposed to suffer for what I'd done. If I'm not suffering—if I achieve true happiness, the curse breaks. We discovered that to our cost on her seventeenth birthday. She made me forget what I had done. When I was with her, I was just a man; a man she loved enough to entrust with her whole being. It was—I can't even describe it except to say that it was perfect." His looked down. "And I lost my soul," he finished bitterly.
"Good Lord," said Wesley in quiet horror. "Did you know that was possible?"
"No," said Angel a little crossly. "You think I wanted to unleash 'the Scourge of Europe' on the woman I loved?"
"No, certainly not." Wesley hesitated. "What happened?"
Angel's shoulders slumped and his head bowed. "I'm guessing you already read about what I did to Drusilla?"
"Yes…," said Wesley apprehensively.
"I started to do that to her. Her last memories of me were of the torture and murder the people she cared about suffered at my hands. And then I grew even more ambitious and tried to have the world sucked into Hell. I got my soul back just in time to get run through and sent there myself, and you know the rest."
[o]
School was finally out for the holidays, which freed up a lot more time for Giles, Willow, and Faith to help Buffy try to figure out why she kept seeing Angel. Xander had yet to make an appearance at the library, which was likely a wise decision, as far as his self-preservation was concerned.
"I don't believe the dreams are connected to the, erm—" said Giles, breaking off and shooting an uncomfortable glance at Buffy.
"Hallucinations," she supplied dully. "What makes you say that, though?"
"Well, lack of transition, for one. You've had the same dream nearly every night for almost the entire semester. If seeing Angel walking down a street and again in the Christmas tree lot were a new symptom of the same cause, the dream should have altered to lead more logically to it."
"Yeah, I guess," said Buffy noncommittally.
"Oh!" said Willow suddenly, her eyes wide, "what if something's just trying to throw Buffy off her game? Not really a hallucination at all?"
"Do you know," said Giles thoughtfully, "I wouldn't be surprised if that were true."
"I like this alternative where I'm not crazy," said Buffy with the most enthusiasm she'd shown so far.
"This gonna be something we can kill?" asked Faith, punching a fist into the palm of her other hand.
"We'll have to do a bit more than speculate before we can ascertain that," said Giles, handing her a book. She gave it the sort of look small children give vegetables.
[o]
By nightfall, they'd discovered several intriguing possibilities, but nothing definite yet. Giles recommended that Buffy not patrol as long as the Angel-sightings continued, because they could be a dangerous distraction if it happened again when she was in the middle of the fight, and Faith was all too happy to pick up the slack.
After walking Willow home, Buffy continued on her way, but apparently hadn't paid much attention to where she was going, because she soon found herself, not back at home, but at the mansion. Her eyes widened and she turned to leave, only to come face-to-face with Angel.
"So, you've finally come back to the scene of the crime," he said. Just like when he'd disappeared into the alley in town, his expression was uncharacteristically harsh.
[o]
Giles frowned at the passage he was reading.
"Just cleaned out a nest," said Faith in greeting as she strode through the double doors.
"Excellent," he said vaguely.
"New lead?" she asked, noticing the book in front of him.
"Possibly. These letters contain references to a—an ancient power known as The First."
"First what?"
"Evil. Absolute. Older than man, than demons. It would certainly want to interfere with a Slayer's performance. It has servants, known as the Bringers, or Harbingers." He showed Faith a picture of men in hooded cloaks. The most noticeable thing about them was that their eyes appeared to have been sewn shut.
"Yikes. Looks like they picked the wrong boss," said Faith with a grimace.
"Yes, well. The point is that these Harbinger chappies can conjure spirit manifestations and set them on people, influence them, haunt them."
"Like what's happening to B," said Faith.
"Precisely," he said. He looked down at the book again. "'For they are the Harbingers of death,'" he read, "'Nothing shall grow above or below them. No seed shall flower, neither in man nor—'"
"Hey, I've seen that," Faith interrupted. "It means dead plants and stuff, right? There was this bunch of dead trees at the lot."
"Well, I think that merits investigation. With weapons," said Giles.
"On it," said Faith. She took a battle axe from the weapons cabinet and departed.
[o]
"Do you have any idea what it's like where you sent me?" Angel demanded.
"I had to," she said pleadingly. She wanted to believe that this was a trick, but his words were what she'd feared ever since that terrible day in May. "The whole world would have ended if I hadn't done it."
"My blood would open the vortex, and then it would be the only thing that could close it."
"That's how it works," said Buffy, trying not to show how much this was getting to her.
"Oh, right," he said scornfully. "So, according to you, you impaled me for the greater good. It didn't occur to you to just smear some of my blood on the sword?" Buffy let out a strangled gasp of horror. "You knew it was true, deep down," he went on, his voice growing louder and angrier by the syllable, "but you still sent me to Hell!"
"No!" she protested, tears blurring her vision. "I didn't know! I would have saved you if I thought there was a chance! I love you, Angel."
He only glared coldly back at her. "That's a lie. Murderer."
The tears were now streaking thick and fast down her cheeks. "No," she sobbed, "no…."
And then he had turned into Miss Calendar. "What about me? If you were going to kill Angel anyway, you couldn't do it before he had the chance to finish me off? I'm surprised Rupert can even look at you." Miss Calendar became Theresa Klusmeyer. "Aren't you supposed to protect people? Good job protecting me." Dozens more faces flashed before her, each looking at her with blame and hatred until finally turning into Angel again.
"You let me kill all of them, but you didn't send me to Hell until I had a soul again." He turned into Spike. "And good job not killing me and Dru when you had the chance. Who knows how many poor, defenseless wankers we've killed since we left?" He turned into Kendra. "And I suppose I wasn't dat important if you didn't even avenge me." She turned into Drusilla. "The stars have been whispering to me, dear little Slayer." Her eyelids fluttered closed, and a wide smile stretched her lips. "Oh, how they whisper, psst, psst. They tell me that you're like me." And she turned into Buffy. "Pain. Death. Suffering. They're what I bring to this world."
It all rang too true, and it was more than Buffy could handle. She fell to her knees and wept desperately into her hands. The Buffy standing over her smirked cruelly.
[o]
Joyce hummed to herself as she put the groceries in the fridge and pantry, then proceeded to empty the dryer of its load of clean, dry clothes. These she brought with her into the living room so that she could watch a program while she folded them. She had just added another of Buffy's shirts to the folded pile when a harsh blast of noise sounded outside, making her jump. The noise continued, and she realized with a flood of embarrassment that her car alarm had gone off. She really needed to get that thing checked.
Abandoning the rest of the clothes, she retrieved her keys from the kitchen and went outside to turn off the alarm. It only took seconds, and though no lights had gone on in the houses around her, her cheeks still burned with humiliation. She turned to go back inside the house, and almost knocked into the vampire standing there, leering at her. She screamed in fright, but also remembered the defense classes she'd taken years ago, and jabbed viciously at him with her keys.
The vampire staggered back a little under the blows that were much more violent than he would have expected from the woman he'd been watching since the sun had set. But he was more surprised than injured, and quickly rallied. Joyce fought tooth and nail, but she was no match for his strength, and soon lay unconscious on the driveway. He picked her up and slung her across his back like a sack of potatoes, then carried her off down the street, humming the same tune she had hummed earlier.
[o]
Xander paced agitatedly around his bedroom, ignoring the occasional shouts echoing from other rooms in the house. So far, he'd avoided Buffy and Willow and been avoided by them for days. He'd spent most of that time looking at what he'd done from all kinds of frightening new angles—all of which made him feel like crap. The worst had been when he found himself able to separate Angel and Angelus in his mind for the first time, which left him with no excuse for what he had done. He still didn't like Angel, but that was just because of a petty rivalry that wasn't even relevant now.
He had to make things right with Buffy and Willow. So what if he didn't know what he was going to say? If he didn't do it soon, Willow might not want to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas with him like they'd done every year for as long as he could remember, and he simply could not allow that to happen. But Buffy was the one he really needed to apologize to, and with that thought, he set off for her house immediately, worried that he'd lose his nerve if he waited any longer.
What he found upon reaching the Summers' home, however, drove all of his half-formed apologies from his mind. The front door was wide open. He ran to the threshold. "Buffy? Mrs. Summers?" he called loudly. No answer. He was about to rush inside to see if they were in there, unconscious maybe, when he noticed what was taped to the doorjamb. It was a slightly overexposed Polaroid of Joyce Summers, gagged and looking utterly terrified. He flipped it over to find an address, followed by a message that raised the hair on the back of his neck.
"Come and play, little girl."
*dramatic chord* I feel horrible for using all of those characters against Buffy in such quick succession. But it did work rather nicely. At first, I was just going to use Angel, Jenny, Theresa, and Buffy herself, but then Spike, Dru, and Kendra wanted to play too. I couldn't say no.