Dust

SETTING: Up the alley.
RATING: NC-17 when I can get the boys in the mood and in position.
DISCLAIMER: The boys aren't mine. *pouts*
WEBSITE: www.colddeadseed.com ( for Spangel, Spuffy, Spike, James and writers far far better than me.)
FEEDBACK: Mmmmm, yummy. Yes please.


DUST

Part 1.

Dust.

He didn’t exactly expect to be covered in roses and confetti when he awoke, but how could the end of the world produce so much dust?

Unless Heaven … Hell … contained an inordinate amount that he couldn’t recall clearly from previous visits?

Angel tried to move and let out a sharp screech of pain.

A long jagged piece of wood giving birth to five very nasty tetanusy nails had been hoisted at his head with all the might a troll had to offer.

He remembered that much from the real world before …

Angel examined the same piece of wood, snapped in two after the nails had entered his shoulder. Did wood go to Hell? Not likely.

Moving his legs proved to be fruitless, and it was impossible to see what was wrong with them without moving all the detritus from on top of his broken body. Panting from the pain and effort, Angel began to slowly lift the wood … iron bars … steel … claws … maces … severed limbs … piled on top of him. With each piece he pushed aside, panic took its place and soon Angel was crying aloud with every desperate shove he made to clear the burdens.

Vampire blood – his own – hit his nostrils, but so did the dark foul slime of the wretched creatures around him. Their deaths sat heavily amongst the eerie silence, only Angel’s efforts cracking the air and sending echoes around the looming walls appearing around him as he fought his way free.

His upper body clear, Angel sat up with a cry of pain and another of disgust as he saw the giant form pinning down his legs.

“Fucking troll. Get off. GET OFF ME!!!”

Which of course the troll, being extremely dead, didn’t, leaving Angel to struggle fruitlessly for what seemed like eons while he tried to wrench the bulky mass of rotting flesh aside.

** Troll flesh rots naturally whilst the creature is alive, so please don’t attribute the skin state to its recent death**

The troll finally pushed away, Angel scrambled awkwardly out of the mound of remains, gasping and panting as he crawled the final metres to a place near the wall where there was only a grubby piece of tarmac covered in … dust.

The true horror of the situation whacked Angel between the eyes with considerable force as he sat back and surveyed the carnage before him. Layer after layer of dismembered bodies tapering up into the darkness, rivers of blood drying mid-ooze over the sides presenting a scene like a giant morbid serving of profiteroles.

Angel tried not to breathe. Inhaling equated to knowledge and there were things that were too devastating to deal with so soon after ….

“I believe this is yours?”

“Shit!”

Angel had stood up suddenly, tense and alert, and only succumbed to the pain and sank back down to the ground when he saw a leathered spidery arm tinged with red and blue snake down from high upon the other side of the pile and grab a limb.

“Did they take away your sense of hearing, Vampire?”

“What?”

“Your ears are intact, yet you cannot comprehend me. Let me sign for you.”

“Illyria, shut up.” Angel’s head drooped and he truly wished he were deaf to the unbearable pain he felt inside. After many minutes of gloomy silence, Angel lifted his head. It took three blinks to get his eyes focussed on what Illyria was holding in her hand – one blink to actually see it and two more to make his brain understand that yes, Illyria really was holding aloft a dark-skinned masculine arm which protruded from the mountain of limbs.

“Oh …” and Angel could have gone on to say “Oh, you found Gunn alive, isn’t it wonderful?” Or “Oh, Gunn was hiding under those dead bodies all along pretending to be dead!” But all that came out was ‘Oh,” because the arm was very limp, very lifeless, and no other words could possibly have encompassed what Angel felt as he saw Illyria holding aloft Gunn’s arm watching his reaction curiously.

Tears fell as Angel once again crouched down and rubbed the damned dust from his forehead. He knew Gunn had died of course. Saw him take one last long breath before charging into the melee to face certain death.

“Certain Death.” The irony wasn’t lost on Angel that he was alive to mutter these words.

Someone knelt before his sobbing form and Angel waited for a hand of comfort to touch his shoulder or face. But Illyria merely waited for his grief to subside and she was there to meet his gaze with her usual intense clinical interest when Angel finally looked up.

“My eyes released water for Wesley. I understand this.”

“Wes.” Another monosyllabic expression of grief and another wave of tears and in amongst the sorrow stormed a part of Angel which wanted to rip Illyria’s throat out for daring to think she could even begin to understand the loss he felt.

“Would it alleviate your solemnity if I called you a poof?”

“What?” Angel’s head snapped up and he looked at Illyria incredulously. “What did you just say, and just to make it clear – I can hear you fine.”

Her head twisted like an alert bird’s, but she never broke eye contact. “I want to make you calm. There was relaxation in you when the smaller vampire called you names.”

Memories of Harmony being called ‘The littlest vampire” swam through Angel’s head, but he couldn’t summon up enough memories of her to make her become this ‘smaller vampire’ who Illyria was referring to. Angel fell back and turned, crawling away from the leathered mantis but rearing up when he found himself facing the pile of bodies once more. He rubbed his eyes roughly. The dust was everywhere. It was invading his senses and nothing he did seemed to be able to wipe it away.

“Ponce. Are you suitably composed yet?”

That did it. Angel spun around, furious and on the attack. “Are you fucking insane, Illyria? We’ve just come through the mother of all battles, I’ve lost Wes and Gunn and I didn’t ever think losing anything would hurt so bad as when I lost Fred to your encrusted royal self, but I’ve lost them all now and it’s left me empty as all hell. And what do you do? You swan around like a carefree stalking robot calling be stupid names, all the while telling me this is a tactic to calm me? I repeat. Are you fucking insane? You have no idea what my grief feels like or you certainly wouldn’t be calling me the names He used to call me.”

‘He.’ That one small name was all it took. Illyria watched with narrowed thoughtful eyes as Angel gasped, clutched his chest then threw his head back and roared his pain into the darkness above, his anguished cry turning to a ferocious snarl as fangs descended and features hardened.

“He’s haunting me! He haunted me when Drusilla brought him home, he haunted me when I was cursed with a soul, he haunted me when he found me in Sunnydale, he haunted me when he was a bloody ghost, and he certainly haunted me when he stayed in LA. And what do I get now? Spike! Everywhere!” Angel threw a handful of dust up into the air and shook his head roughly as the particles spun back down to cover him. His voice grew quiet. “I can’t escape him, even now. The sneaky little pain in the arse even made sure he saved my life before he went down just to make sure my torment was complete.” Angel kicked the nearest evil-looking body part in the pile and shook his fist at the sky. “Always trying to upstage me, weren’t you Spike! What do you get to give me as a parting gift? You save my life then get beheaded just so I can’t repay you and make us even! Should I even be surprised at how fucking selfish you are??!!”

“You look up when you talk to Spike?” Angel looked at Illyria and slipped out of his game face, confused. She tilted her head up and nodded at Angel. “You speak as if Spike has ascended.”

Angel wiped his hands over his eyes and smiled slowly, tearfully. “He even fools me after death,” he said as he glanced down and scuffed the ground with his foot.

“Many people who cannot discover their loved ones in the afterlife also could not locate them when they were standing close by them on the edge of war.”

This comment brought Angel up to full height as he stalked across to loom over Illyria. “Spit it out,” he ordered. “Go on. Say it because despite my busted shoulder I have a whole lot of fight left in me and I’d love to hear the sound a crustacean cracking makes right about now.”

Illyria didn’t flinch. All Angel received was a haughty glare and some terse words. “You say I do not understand grief and I have been told I do not understand love or intense emotion. But I have lost my entire world and the loss you are feeling radiates from your insides and burns me. Your friends are dead. You are here now, alone, bereft, and suppressed love eats at your insides and mourns lost opportunities. And they say I am the cold one with everything to learn about love.”

“You know Illyria, maybe you inherited more of Fred than I’ve ever given you credit for because you’re not only turning chatty, you’re also seemingly capable of spouting an endless stream of clap trap at inopportune moments.” Angel hesitated and looked skywards. “Sorry Fred.” Then he went to walk away, stopped and glared back at Illyria over his bleeding shoulder. “You’ll notice that I know Fred is well and truly in Heaven. Not even you could keep her from there.”

Angel walked five steps, then …

“But do you really know where Spike is, Angel?”

Something in the tone made Angel turn, albeit against his better judgement and with a sudden shot of nervousness that he couldn’t explain. The fact that Illyria made no further comment and simply walked up to him, past him, then wound her way around the various corpses on her way to exiting the alley only served to spook Angel further.

He knew he shouldn’t react. He knew he had to stay and separate the corpses of those he killed from those of Gunn and …. Dust. Then he could perform a burial and make some sort of speech? Angel’s head drooped and he tried to shake some sense of purpose into himself, but nothing he did could lift his heart to deal with the emotionally monumental taks before him. Why had he survived? Why had they not? Was it guilt that kept him from dealing with this aftermath and performing his duty?

Illyria shifting from the shadows barely registered until she spoke once more.

“It is ready, but it cannot be set in motion until you have left this scene.”

“What’s ready?” and Angel couldn’t keep the lethargy and disinterest from his tone.

“You will come with me.”

He looked up. “Illyria, as usual, I have no idea what you’re going on about, but I can’t go … anywhere.” Angel’s cheek twitched. “Do you know why? Because none of my friends can go anywhere any more. Wes is dead. Fred has been killed and absorbed by you and I can’t tell you how much resentment I’m holding back every time I have to deal with you knowing that she once inhabited that body and Gunn is here scattered in god knows how many pieces under this pile of shit! And Spike … Spike is fucking everywhere, I can’t damn well escape him. He’s on my skin, in my ears, mixing with my sweat, he’s covering every fucking thing that’s left and he’s just fucking all over me!”

Illyria took a single step forward.

“Your obscenities resemble those of the blonde haired vampire’s.”

“Stop talking like that! You know his name is Spike so fucking call him Spike! And my name’s Angel. And I’m swearing because I’m tired and hurt and … they’re gone. He’s gone. And I just can’t cope with thinking about any of it yet.”

“I understand your resentment. I understand your anger and grief. But you are not willing to understand what I am, what I was. My power …”

“Illyria, I don’t want to hear another speech about your fucking power! They’re dead! They’re gone! Humans all die eventually, but they perished now because of my decisions.! Angel passed his hand over his eyes and looked Heavenwards, pleading, holding his hands out wide. “And Him…! Eternity, forever … they were our words and now who do I talk to about forever? Fucking Spike. Always able to make me feel guilt and rage and alarm and … who can make me feel anything now? Who will ever make me feel again?”

“I can help you vampire … Angel, but you must come with me now. Please. We will return to perform your burial rituals.”

“Please,” echoed Angel tiredly. “I’m so scared of saying goodbye that I’ll allow myself to be led away by someone who has only just learnt to say my name and the word ‘please’ because it allows me to delay my duties.”

He moved towards Illyria, stopped, tried to brush his coat clean of dust, then cursed and strode forward. “Show me what you have to. I can’t deal with this now.”

Not hesitating, Illyria strode out ahead into the inky darkness through which even Angel had trouble adjusting his sight.

Angel emerged into a rush of air, blinking to adjust to the strange eerie light which poured down from above and the particles of dust which seemed to have followed him out of the tunnel and refused to leave him alone.

Angel looked up, looked down, blinked some more. “How …?” he began, then spun around and ran back to where a solid rock wall now replaced the tunnel.

“You’re playing games with me? Now? At a time like this? Illyria …!” But when he turned, he saw that she had moved out onto a thin walkbridge spanning the great familiar cavern. He had no choice but to follow her, alarmed and confused.

She waited for Angel to reach her and held her hand up to silence him as he went to spout forth a volley of abuse.

Angel knocked her hand away and hissed menacingly, “I don’t know how you got us here, but if you were homesick, I wouldn’t have stopped you coming here alone. You know what I had to do back there, so why on earth am I here in Drogyn’s playground?”

“It is called the Deeper Well to those who choose to refer to it by name.”

Angel's panicked voice echoed alarmingly around the vast space. “Illyria, I don’t care what it’s called. I want to know why you’ve brought me here? Are you feeling homesick for all your Old One buddies because to be honest, I’ll be delighted if you want to hang out here instead of following me for the rest of my days, only please just send me back to the alley! I can’t leave Gunn and Spike there without saying something, doing something in their memory.”

Illyria nodded as if agreeing, but made no attempt to move or rectify the situation. Instead, she continued talking calmly, “When the fight commenced I felt the Old Ones trying to reach me. Their powers could not help me directly, but they isolated the fight and transported it to another dimension where they could be near. Understand that not everyone can be saved, but ….Angel? Angel!”

His eyes were wide and bright and he was suddenly staring fixedly over Illyria’s shoulder. Ignoring her calls he began running across the bridge, focussing entirely on a small figure standing in a doorway to the right of the bridge approach, the blonde hair becoming more distinct as Angel closed in.

“Spike!” Angel chanted the name under his breath in time with his footfalls, but now as he saw him waiting he yelled out the name and launched himself into the doorway, laughing with joy and relief.

"Spike, you're alive!"

It came as something of a shock therefore when he was slugged hard by Spike and promptly bitten and thrown across a dark room into a hard, stone wall.

“Angel,” said Spike, licking his lips and vamping out as he hovered angrily over the prone, bleeding figure. “About time you got here. Been waiting far too long for the chance to kill you.”


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