Beholder

An Angel of death stalked Sunnydale that night. Dark, deadly, and utterly without mercy, he slaughtered vampires and demons throughout the town, scything through the undead and evil until not one was left standing. He stood, panting slightly, in the aftermath of the slaughter.

She was right. There were more demons and vampires in Sunnydale than he’d seen since Buffy and her mother had moved to the town from LA. The forces of evil had overrun the Hellmouth in the month since the Slayer’s blinding. Angel wondered if Giles had realized jusw baw bad things were, or if he was still so focusedBuffBuffy that he hadn’t given it any thought. The ex-Watcher thought of her as his child, Angel knew, especially since Joyce and Dawn had died within a year of each other.

Angel hadn’t seen this much demonic activity even in LA. It called his entire mission there into question. He scowled as he strode down Crawford Street to the mansion he still held title to. The place was a jumble of dusty furniture and empty rooms, but he felt her presence there almost as strongly as in her own home. Here, she had kissed him as if the world were ending. There, they had sparred, playing with each other and mock-fighting wgreagreater speed than they could ever use with mere humans. Here, he had fought her to a standstill, his words, aimed to twist and rend just as his sword would, instead jarring her into using all her skill, all her power to send him to hell. And here, here he had taken her to the floor, ground his feverish dead body against her tiny one as he sucked the life out of her at her own demand. He was hard just thinking about it and shamed--both at his enjoyment then and his continued pleasure in it now.

He felt guilty, god yes, but still…in the long daylight hours, when he had no one to help and nowhere to be, that was the memory in which he dwelt over and over again. How good she had felt under him, soft and sensual, how similar to the only other real time he’d had her writhing beneath him, how attuned to every breath, every beat of her heart, he’d become ever since that day. Buffy had no idea how difficult it was for him to even be near her after he’d taken her within himself. The blood tie between them was as strong as any he’d felt with those he sired. He’d marked her as his mate, she bore his brand, and he could never truly let her go, though he’d tried.

Leaving her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, and the loss of their day together—their life together—was still an intolerable ache within him. He could only accept it if he refused to even think of it. He’d given her up, given up his humanity, and she’d died anyway. It had all been for nothing. Like her death, given freely to save her sister, who died anyway when the tower collapsed with the closing of the Gate. And Angel hadn’t even been there to help, instead that had fallen to Spike.

Spike. His lip curled at the thought of his bastard offspring. Spike was lucky that he’d never returned to Sunnydale, because Angel would gladly have added another vampire, chipped or not, to his tally for the night. Especially *that* one. He knew himself totally irrational on the subject of Buffy and other men, but at least Riley had been human. At least Angel had been able to feel that his decision, his pain, his loneliness without Buffy, was in a good cause if she was with someone who loved her and could give her the things that Angel could never offer. Sunlight, children, a life instead of the undeath that he spent his eternity not living.

He scrubbed his hands against his eyes, brushing the dust of his brethren from himself abruptly. Buffy was still everything to him, but he had no idea how to make things right between them. He wanted her, still, with every cell in him, loved her, needed her to be well and happy. And she wasn’t. And it was his fault. He should have been there to help her, if he had, she wouldn’t be blnow,now, wouldn’t have tried to end it. Her injuries meant nothing to him, he’d meant it when he’d told her that he’d love her covered in slime. She glowed with beauty from within…it wasn’t the physical expression of it that he was so drawn to, though he’d loved to draw her from every conceivable angle.

No, she was as lovely as the day he’d first set eyes on her, bathed in sunshine and innocent of what was to come. Her battle scars only made her more precious to him. They were badges of honor, of pain, each one. But how could he convey that to her? She was awash in bitterness, alone, and lost, truly lost. What right did he have to force her to live when she’d already lost so much?

He climbed wearily into his lonely bed and one last thought crossed his mind as he drifted into uneasy slumber. *What does she have to live for anyway?”

*

“It’s not the best way to slit your wrists, you know,” Anya blurted out as Giles drove Buffy and her friends back to the house that evening.

The conversations surrounding Buffy in the car died. “What I mean is, if you really want to die, you should do long vertical cuts, not horizontal ones.” Anya added helpfully.

The others in the car stared at the ex-demon in shocked horror, their light pleasantries drying up instantly in the wake of her statement.

“Ah-An, honey, tips on doin’ the suicide, not really helpful,” Xander stuttered. “Buffy, she didn’t really mean…”

He was cut off by laughter as Buffy began chuckling, first softly and then louder. She turned her head toward them in the back seat and Xander was surprised to see a smile, a genuine smile, on his friend’s face. She hadn’t smiled like that since, god, he couldn’t remember seeing her smile since long before she’d died. Certainly not since she’d found, upon her resurrection, that her gift had failed the one she’d tried so hard to save. They had never even found Dawn’s body in the rubble, apparently she’d just gone back to being a green ball of energy or something, for no human little sister was ever discovered.

Buffy wiped her face, tears streaming from under her dark glasses. “I’m sorry Xander, but you just sounded so…horrified. Anya,” she said, tilting her head slightly, “thanks for the critique. I’d say I need more practice, but I think once was enough, don’t you?” Buffy smirked at them in good humor and turned to Giles. “I think it’s time for pizza and The Princess Bride tonight, what do you say, Giles?”

The ex-Watcher glanced at his Slayer. She seemed bloody flip about the entire thing, in his opinion, but he didn’t want to be the one who spoiled the mood. This was the best he’d seen her since he’d returned from England. “Shall we stop and have pizza on the way to your house, Buffy, or do you wish to order in?” She’d been so sensitive about leaving the house, and he’d not wished to push it, but if she was offering, then perhaps this could be her first official outing. *Well, to somewhere not involving ambulances and blood loss,* he thought morbidly.

“It’s right on the way, isn’t it? Let’s just go in and eat it,” she said brightly.

Giles nearly rear-ended the auto in front of him, staring at Buffy again. She was willing to leave the car? Perhaps the counselor had been right to release her early, though he’d doubted the woman’s intelligence at the time.

“Buffy, do you have the cane they gave you?” Willow asked, as Giles parked the car down the block from the pizza place.

“Yup. You brought it with my clothes, remember?” Buffy replied. “I’ll walk next to Giles, K Giles?”

“That will be fine, Buffy. I shall open your door momentarily,” Giles responded, cutting the engine and exiting the car. He nipped around the front and opened Buffy’s door for her. The Slayer climbed out slowly and reached for his arm, stumbling a little over the curb as she tried to straighten the cane. Giles cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry Buffy,” he said, “I should have warned you that was there.”

“It’s ok, Giles, no big,” she responded, but her face flushed with embarrassment despite her words. She held onto his arm as she extended the white-tipped cane before her, skimming the surface of the sidewalk as she’d been taught. This was the first time she’d used the cane in public, and despite the emotional control she’d shown in the car, she was clearly self-conscious about it.

Xander, Anya and Willow climbed out of the car behind them, chattering like squirrels, in Giles’s opinion, anyway. As they neared a group of three young men loitering near the alley behind the restaurant, Buffy’s head snapped up, her face suddenly alert. She dropped Giles’s arm and shoved him behind her. He watched in confused dismay as she lost the clumsy shuffle that had characterized her movements for the past month and moved forward fluidly, the cane dipping as she approached the curb.

Buffy dropped a hand to her abdomen, then turned her body slightly to align it with the young man standing to the fore of the group. He looked up and grinned at the sight of the disabled woman approaching him. Buffy moved closer to him, stepping with exaggerated care from the curb to the alley. Giles was about to ask her what she was doing, when she exploded into motion before his eyes.

She lifted the cane and thrust it forward, directly through the young man’s chest. As Giles drew breath to yell, the young man exploded into dust before the shocked eyes of the Scooby gang.

Buffy continued the motion she’d begun and swept the cane to the side, where she hit the second man, sweeping his legs out from under him. She flowed forward one step and drew back the cane, pausing for a split second before thrusting directly downward. This strike, too, was true, and the vampire had no time to react before he dusted.

The third vampire leapt forward onto her and knocked the cane from the Slayer’s hands before tumbling her into a rolling attack that left her pinned beneath his larger bulk. As Giles raced forward, the vamp pummeled her with quick uppercuts to her chin, dislodging her dark glasses and baring her scarred eyes to the night.

In one lithe motion of her legs, Buffy flipped him under her, pinning him between her supple thighs. “Giles, stake me,” she cried, holding out her left hand as she punched the vampire brutally with her right.

Giles had ventured out with nothing--he cringed at the shame his Watcher ancestors must be feeling--but he darted into the alley, snapped a packing crate and ran back to Buffy with a suitable board as fast as his middle-aged bones could move. Without thinking, he tossed the improvised stake to her, and was flummoxed to see her catch and use it without even a pause.

The vampire between her thighs dusted, and Buffy froze, her battle adrenalin waning and allowing thought to intrude upon instinct and training. She reached both hands up to cover her eyes. “Giles, please, where are my glasses?” she asked plaintively.

Angel stepped out of the shadowy alley, holding the glasses in his hand. Giles watched Buffy, gauging her reaction. At first, her head snapped up, as it had when she’d…sensed…the other vampires. But her feral expression softened in the blink of an eye. “Angel?” she whispered.

“Here, Buffy,” he said, gliding forward to place the glasses oh-so-gently on her face. “That was quite a show, Slayer,” he added.

Buffy flushed, then slowly rose from the kneeling split she’d ended in once the vampire she’d been straddling was dust. “Cane, please, Giles?” she asked, and the Watcher grabbed the object from the sidewalk and handed it to her.

“Wow, Buffy, that was…intense!” Xander blurted. “How did you know they were even there? It’s not like you could see them, right? I mean like Daredevil or something?”

Buffy turned her face to him. “No, Xand, I couldn’t see them. But I can…sense…vampires. I sort of, feel them in my gut. I wasn’t even thinking, it just felt natural, somehow. I could sense where they were. I guess I didn’t lose that feeling when I lost my sight.”

“That doesn’t mean you should be risking yourself to attack them, Buffy,” Angel growled quietly, moving closer to her. “I had my eye on them already. They weren’t going to leave the alley alive.”

“So I should just go back to hiding inside and let you take care of my battles for me, is that it, Angel?” Buffy snapped, hurt at his tone.

Angel drew back from her anger. “No, I didn’t mean, I just. Buffy please, when he started hitting you, I was afraid you were…”

“What, looking for an easy way to die? No, Angel, that actually hadn’t occurred to me till you just suggested it. I was just doing what came naturally, but I guess you wouldn’t understand that, being unnatural and all, huh?” Buffy bit the words out angrily at him.

Willow saw the deep hurt in Angel’s eyes at Buffy’s harsh words, before he shuttered his expression to its usual closed mask. Angel made a convenient target for Buffy’s anger, Willow thought. Anger at life for treating her this way, anger at men for not loving her enough, anger at the powers for choosing her and then abandoning her to fate. He wouldn’t fight back, he’d just take her jibes, especially now. But Willow knew that Buffy’s anger, and her earlier light-hearted act, were just a cover for her desperately fragile emotions. She needed to deal with them, and that meant no gang to get in the way.

“Angel, good, now that you’re here, you and Buffy can walk home while we eat. We’ll bring you some pizza later,” Willow chirped, shooing the others into the pizza place with resolve face and leaving the lovers alone together in the evening shadows.

“What do you think you’re doing, Willow?” Giles hissed angrily as the door slammed behind them.

“What Buffy needs, Giles,” Willow replied. “She needs Angel, and she’s afraid to. She needs to know that he won’t leave her again.”

Xander chimed in, “Cause that would be a bad thing?”

Anya kicked him. “Don’t be stupid, Xander. I’m not jealous because Buffy has never wanted you that way, but everyone can see that she’s broken. She needs him. She has since he left.”

Giles reluctantly admitted it was true. But that didn’t mean that Angel would recognize it. Or act upon it.

*

Buffy looked scared and lost without the support of her friends. She held the cane tightly in her hands, more like it was a bat than a cane.

“Planning to stake me with that, Buffy?” Angel asked jokingly.

“Planning to give me a reason to, Angel?” she taunted, before shifting the cane to her right hand, somewhat reluctantly, it seemed to him.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said earlier. It just…threw me…seeing you fighting like that. I was afraid you might get hurt,” he admitted.

“I know, Angel,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was kinda weirded out by the whole thing. I mean, I didn’t even do it consciously…it just sorta happened. What if there had been a crate or something in the way? What if I had tripped? It felt right to attack them at the time, but I’m just so clumsy now and if I had fallen they would have been on me and it didn’t even hit me till now…”

Angel grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her to him. He kissed her hard, plundering her mouth with his own--releasing his own fear and stopping the increasingly hysterical words flowing from her lips. Buffy struggled against him for a second, then relaxed into his embrace, kissing him back with all of the repressed passion and need that she’d felt for him for such a terrible, long time. It wasn’t until a car of teenaged boys drove by, catcalling at them, that Angel pulled gently away.

“I think there are better places for this, don’t you?” he asked, panting just a little as her touch sent heat flashing through his undead nerves.

Buffy sighed, then grabbed his arm and began walking with him slowly down the sidewalk, her cane sweeping lightly before her. Being with him again, even if it was only for a short time, made her heart ache. He was all that she wanted and could never have. No one else would ever measure up.

Angel looked at her beloved face, hidden behind the dark glasses that he was beginning to hate with a fiery passion. They concealed her gaze from him and he’d never before realized how much he depended upon her eyes to tell him what she was thinking and how she was feeling. The glasses were like a curtain, hiding her soul from him.

Her steps were hesitant, as if she didn’t quite trust the cane to warn her of obstacles. He hated to see her walk like that when she’d moved just minutes before with her accustomed grace and power. That was the way she should move always, he thought.

They walked at her pace, moving slowly through the fragrant evening air, and Buffy felt the tightness that had been ever-present since well before her maiming ease a bit at his presence. He slid her hand down from his arm and clasped it in his own as they strolled slowly homeward in companionable silence.

They turned the corner to her house and suddenly both were on edge again. Buffy turned her face toward him, “Angel, do you see anything? I feel…”

“Vampires,” he growled, game face flowing on as the demon in him rose at the promise of blood and death.

“What got them all stirred up tonight?”

“Um, I was a little, tense last night after I left. I may have, uh, killed a few…dozen.”

“Ah, so I can thank you for this little gift, huh?” she teased with a grin spreading across her face. “Anything on the pavement?” she asked, moving forward more quickly.

“Clear,” he rumbled.

“Go!”

“Buffy are you…”

“Just go! But don’t get too close, it’s hard to tell you apart when you move fast.”

Angel nodded in agreement before realizing that she couldn’t see him. The last thing he wanted to feel was that cane stabbing him in the heart. It hurt enough just watching her use it on others.

He leapt ahead, circling around the vamps to attack them from the rear. He dusted two of them quickly, their fledgling skills no match for his centuries of experience. The remaining four stood poised between Buffy and him, clearly at a loss.

“Is that the Slayer?” one asked as she tapped her way toward him. “No one told me she was blind!”

“She isn’t, you idiot, it’s a trick!” another replied. “Now kill her!”

They surged at Buffy and Angel growled, worried that his love couldn’t handle two of them at once. His attention was distracted, however, by the burly vamp directly in front of him. He punched him, with no discernable effect, then backed up and assayed a roundhouse kick which met with similar results. It was like punching and kicking a rock. The vamp grunted and swiped at Angel with one meaty paw and Angel went down. His attention fixed back on Buffy for a moment and he watched in something akin to awe as she pivoted, lunged, then reversed and managed to kill both vamps with opposite ends of her cane. They’d never even touched her.

Heartened, he somersaulted backwards and pulled his sword from the sheath on his back. He slid forward lithely and sliced open his adversary’s leg with one swift cut. When the mountainous vamp hissed and clutched at his leg, Angel swung the sword in a neat decapitating blow and moved forward through its dust to skewer the remaining vamp on the end of the blade at the same time Buffy stabbed it with her cane. The sword and cane ended up crossed with each other like some bad three musketeers movie as the vamstedsted around them.

Angel was panting slightly at the exertion when Buffy bounded forward into his arms exuberantly. “We did it! I did it! Angel did you see?” she grinned up into his face, for all the world as if she was gazing at him right then and he couldn’t help but grin back at the joy emblazoned on her face.

“I saw, Slayer,” he emphasized her title and saw pride and happiness flash across her lovely face. He had to, he couldn’t stop himself--he kissed her, grabbing her tiny body and crushing it to his own.

She kissed him back, nearly dropping her cane in her haste before she remembered to loop it over her wrist. Angel scooped her into his arms, still kissing her, and carried her into her yard and up the stairs to her house. He set her on her feet at the front door, leaning into her and eating at her mouth, tasting her joy, her youth, and the lust that he knew always rose within her after slaying.

Buffy fumbled the door open, clumsy from passion rather than blindness, and Angel followed her in. He was fiercely glad to have her to himself. He scooped her back into his arms and bounded with her up the stairs to her bedroom, laying her on the bed and leaning over to press passionate kisses across her face. He pulled the dark glasses from her before she could object and dropped them disdainfully on the bedside table, then returned to kiss her eyes and cheekbones with cool biting nips.

Buffy moaned, dropped the cane and reached for Angel’s shirt, ripping it open and sending buttons flying across the room. She gasped as handhands glided over his chest. She realized it was the first time she’d felt vampire flesh under her newly sensitive fingers. He was smooth and hard and cool—room temperature—under her inquisitive fingers and the touch of his skin seemed to stoke her heat, building the fires within her ever higher.

She wrapped her hands around his neck, pulling him down to her and kissing the sensitive cleft where his neck met that muscular plane. He growled in response, bending his head to kiss her again as his hands caressed her urgently. She moaned into his mouth and slid her fingers down to the top of his pants, trailing them teasingly across his waist.

Angel swore as his game face surfaced, then realized that she couldn’t tell, couldn’t see his loss of control.

“I love when you do that,” she murmured throatily as her nimble fingers unfastened his pants to free his heavy cock.

“Do what?” he growled, tugging her pants open in return and sliding them off her slender legs.

“I love when you lose control like that…when your demon shows,” she said, stroking him firmly

“You…how can you tell?” he asked in surprise, then gasped as she stroked the sensitive head.

“Your growl changes,” she said, “you, ah, get more rumbly and deeper. It’s sexy, it makes me all tingly.”

“Where?” he gasped as she arched her neck to lick his chest, sliding her mouth across the muscles to lap at his nipple. He growled even harder when she bit him.

“Mmmm, right there,” Buffy moaned, arching up into his hand as he cupped her mound, rubbing his long, talented fingers across her silky thong.

“Here?” he rumbled. “So what if I slide down and do this…” he slid down her flat belly, licking and nipping as he went, “and I do this…” he forced her legs apart and pressed his mouth against her satin-covered clit, “and this…” he growled open-mouthed, blowing cool air across her teasingly….

Buffy shrieked in pleasure, coming in waves as he growled against her clit, his fangs vibrating against her.

Angel pulled her thong from her and lapped at the moisture flooding from his lover, still growling as he did so. He pinned her there, both hands sliding underneath her delectable ass to hold her open and writhing against his mouth as he stabbed his tongue deep into her molten center to taste her passion.

He brought her to climax again by suckling her clit with his ever-talented tongue, and again by stabbing first two and then three fingers deep into her wet cunt until she screamed his name over and over.

She looked glorious, warm, flushed, and wanton beneath him and his mind moved without his volition to his most cherished fantasies. He moved over her, his powerful body coiled above her and he teased her wet opening with the head of his aching cock. Buffy grabbed at him and pulled, trying to draw him into her, but Angel had waited for too many years to rush this precious moment.

“I love you,” he growled, and thrust home within his lover’s tiny body, seating himself deep within her and holding absolutely still for a long, long moment.

Buffy groaned at his possession, pulsing around him uncontrollably. This, this was right, this was what she needed…*who* she needed. “Angel!” she gasped, “Oh, Angel, I love you! Please!”

He moved teasingly, rotating his hips against her and seating himself even deeper within her willing body. Buffy panted, her hands roaming his chest before they fluttered up to caress his face. She stared up at him with sightless eyes and he blinked, reminded that she could not see his expression. He morphed back to his human mask at the thought, regret filling him so suddenly that he sobbed once, before he could control it.

Buffy drew his head down to her own, kissing him hard and deep, swallowing his tears, until he lost all but the last vestige of sadness, her ardor filling him as he filled her. He began a slow, torturous rhythm, sliding within her slick channel and then out again. She arched and flexed those amazing muscles deep within her and he growled again at the exquisite sensation. He moved faster, each thrust rubbing her clit skillfully until she writhed underneath him in abandon.

He watched her lovely face, unwilling to let himself go until she’d reached her completion, and he felt tears threaten behind his eyes again at her blind stare. Then she clenched around him, her muscles nearly tearing him in two as she spasmed uncontrollably around his hard cock.

She tilted her neck and begged him, “Angel, please, bite. I need you!”

He groaned at the invitation, so long wished for, and he couldn’t stop himself, he put his mouth to her delicate neck, his tongue lapping at the scar…his mark upon his mate. He thrust deeper within her, until he felt she had swallowed him whole, then he sank his aching fangs into her buttery skin. She screamed and came again wildly around him. The rush of blood hit him like a fist, and he convulsed, pumping into her as her essence, hot, sweet, loving, and alive! threw him over the edge and they plummeted together into oblivion.

To be continued…