Angelus Unbound

Angelus Unbound

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Mutant Enemy does. All hail Joss Whedon.

Spoilers/Ships: This is AU. Angelus/Buffy.

Distribution: Sure, just let me know.

Feedback: Is always nice. darkrhiannon@aol.com

Rating: R for violence and sex.

Author's Note: I wrote this after the 1/29/03 Angel ep and it contains spoilers thereto. This one will be Jossed into kingdom come by next week. In the meantime…enter my dream… -Rhi

*

The last word out of the souled-one’s mouth was the first thought in the demon’s mind.

“Buffy?”

The soul had uttered it as a question. He hadn’t even dared dream the expression of it. The shaman had tried everything to make the soul lose its grip on its unnatural undead body. Nothing had worked. Reconciliation with Wesley, the first thing he’d tried, had failed to make the soul more than merely happy. Next, he’d added the friends into the mix, given the soul its due as leader and champion. Still nothing.

Cordelia’s assurances of love and heartfelt apologies garnered little more than a happy smile. Even the fight and reconciliation with the son had yielded only transitory joy…nothing permanent or soul-threatening. Conquering the demon and restoring sun to the City of Angels provided wistful contemplation rather than bliss, so the shaman had, at last, resorted to the oldest method on earth. Imagined sex with Cordelia was powerful…in a physical sense. The soul enjoyed the voluptuous embrace of the lovely, dark-haired beauty, as well as her bounteous charms. He was, after all, male. But even that powerful sexual release failed to lose the soul until the shaman found, deep with the most cherished memories guarded in the soul’s heart and mind, a name.

It was, the shaman thought, a silly name, and he didn’t quite understand the impassioned significance that it held for the soul. But power was power, and so, the shaman loosed the name within the heart of both demon and soul.

And they responded.

The soul, still basking in the fake physical aftermath of a successful, if vanilla, coupling, gasped in remembered bliss. The demon reared its head and screamed in mixed rage and triumph. And the soul uttered that oddly beloved, fearsome name once more before releasing its hold on the body both shared.

“Buffy.”

She was all Angelus could think about and he laughed with glee at the thought of seeing her glowing face, feeling her pain, controlling her, besting her, taking her, and possessing her. She was all he thought about…all he could think about, and he nearly wept with joy at possessing the soul’s body once more so that he could finally claim his mate forever.

The cage posed little problem. He laughed some more looking out at the frightened faces of the soul’s “family.” They were sheep…easily manipulated and just as easily disposed of. He hushed his laughter and examined the bonds which held him. They were easily snapped, should he wish to do so, and he plotted his escape quietly while he tugged surreptitiously at them.

*

Buffy was exhausted. After counseling at school from 10 till 2, she’d rushed home, concentrated on the SITs, changed and headed for the DMP. She hurried through her shift there, ever conscious of the growing twilight and her need to be home, protecting everyone, by dusk. The paltry wages that the school provided were accompanied by health and dental benefits that she rarely required, but Dawn was another matter. Dawn, Key though she might have been, was now a human teen, and she had the cavities to prove it. Buffy groaned at the thought of fillings and scraped harder at the grill.

At last her shift was done and she headed home to shower and scrub the grease from her tired body before changing into patrol clothes. Tonight she was taking Spike and the SITs on patrol together to try to train them in strategy. She knew, before even setting out, that it was likely doomed to failure. No matter how she tried to iss uss upon them that Spike was dangerous, she knew that her own intimacy with him and more importantly the intimacy that she’d shared once with Angel, showed, no matter how she tried to hide it.

Spike was now family to her, one more responsibility on the endless list that encompassed Dawn, the Scoobies, the SITs, and the world. Buffy was in charge of saving them all, and sometimes the burden seemed far past impossible and well into soul-crushing. She could no longer summon the need and passion that she’d once felt for the now-souled vampire. She was empty…adrift on the tides of the Hellmouth, and its deadly currents pulled at her, sucking her strength, her resolve, her very being into its whirlpool until she despaired of ever getting out. Hence, training. If only one of the SITs could be taught, could learn the killer instinct so necessary for a successful Slayer, then Buffy could rest a little easier, could concentrate just a little more on fighting instead of worrying.

She spoke and demonstrated and finally, when all else failed her, trapped the SITs in a tomb with one rather measly vampire. She and Spike hovered outside to make sure that the SITs dispatched the vamp, and Buffy allowed herself a glance in his direction. She worried about him, despite her better judgment. He’d been so horribly tortured and tormented by The First and she wept for the changes in the once confident vampire. He’d been so sure and strong. She blamed herself for his broken mind and crushed spirit.

When he and Drusilla had cruised into town back in her junior year, Buffy had feared him, yes, but more than anything, she’d admired the devil-may-care attitude he’d dripped and the confident manner he’d worn like a second skin. Spike had been many things, all of them trouble, but she’d found him strangely attractive even then. He was so very different from Angel, she thought, that was probably the attraction. Spike had made unlife seem like the high life—had shown such dreadful glee, such vicious joy—that even she had been drawn to that flaming confidence.

It wane nne now, and Buffy knew that she was responsible for its loss, as she was for Willow’s darkness and Dawn’s very existence. At times, she wondered why they hadn’t just left her dead…it would all have been so much easier.

She shrugged off her melancholy and rounded up the victorious and cocky SITs and Spike and herded them all home before heading for her third job, the only real one…patrol. It was a long night, filled with two unknown demons, three already identified ones and 17 vampires, a full night’s work, even for her. They were drawn, she knew, by the overwhelming evil that The First projected all around its manifestations, and by the hope that she, while dealing with it, might fail to notice the other, smaller evils that made their way to her town.

At last, impossibly weary and barely able to keep her eyes open, Buffy greeted the dawn as she trudged slowly back to her house. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, forgetting for a moment that four of the SITs were now ensconced within. She closed the door quietly on them and trudged back downstairs to curl up in a chair in the living room, too tired to do anything more than pull her leather coat, *Angel’s coat,* her traitorous brain supplied, over her as a makeshift blanket and fall into an uneasy sleep for the three hours before she must shower and return to work once again.

The leather no longer smelled of his unique scent, of sandalwood and soap with just the faintest sense of blood, but it comforted her, nonetheless, and she cuddled into it, wishing, as always, that it was him holding her in his strong, cool arms.

*

It hadn’t taken much time at all, and Angelus chortled with glee at the sight of Fred the annoying, lying unconscious by the cage. He’d simply had to grab her through the bars and threaten her life to bring the others to their knees. They clustered around her, all except Cordy, who, with incredible bravery or stupidity (and knowing her, he suspected the latter and not the former) confronted him as he leapt for the stairs and his freedom.

“Angelus,” she said, and he turned to her in exaggerated surprise. “I know you think you can join with this Beast and fight against us, but you need to know that we’ll stop you. We’ll get Faith…”

Angelus smiled malevolently at her. “Cordy, you are living proof that I am so much smarter than Soul-Boy that he just doesn’t deserve to exist at all. What he thought he saw in you is beyond me. You’re shockingly boring, sanctimonious, and dreadfully annoying. I’d be doing everyone a favor if I just killed you right now. But you know what? I can’t be bothered. You just aren’t worth my time, Cordelia.”

The seer jumped, startled at his vehemence. “What? But Angel said…” her voice trailed off as she realized, again, that Angel was not standing before her.

“I’m not Angel,” he hissed, “and you’re not Buffy, Cordelia! How could I ever want you when I’ve had her?” He grabbed her and pulled one arm up around her neck, glaring at the suddenly halted onrush of Wesley and Connor as he backed slowly toward the stairs.

“She was a crush,” Cordy sputtered indignantly. “Angel and I have a more mature love, an adult love….”

Angelus laughed derisively. “You have NOTHING, Cordy. He’s kidding himself. You know what? You could have fucked him into the next century and I wouldn’t have come back…it’s a good thing you little twits didn’t try that one to banish the soul, ‘cause it wouldn’t have worked. The only woman he’s ever loved in 245 years is Buffy, Cordelia. No matter how you sniff around him, you’ll never be her. And frankly, even with blonde hair, prancing around with your sword and your kyerumption, you’ll never be her. Never. And guess what? You’re not worth my time. I’m outta here, babe, just be glad that I’m not hungry right now….”

He pushed her into Connor and exited the cellar with a flourish. They all heard the click of the lock on the door. As they rushed for the entrance, Cordelia wondered if Angel would ever forgive her.

*

Buffy was, if anything, even more tired than she’d been yesterday. She had finished her shifts at the high school and the DMP, showered and crept downstairs to leaf through the growing piles of bills and balance her meager checking account. It was simply impossible. The SITS, Dawn, Willow, Spike and Andrew were eating her out of house and home. The mortgage bill stared at her with greedy eyes and she had nearly died when she’d opened the water bill. Providing this many people with food and shelter, electricity and water, was eating up every cent she could earn and ten more besides. Every day she slipped further and further into debt, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she could never climb out.

She compromised by paying all of the mortgage and parts of both electricity and water bills, calculating in her head how many hours she’d need to work at the DMP to make up the difference. Perhaps she could take a third job, somewhere? She could be a night watch at one of the many cemeteries in town, but that would tie her down to one, when she really needed to patrol all of them.

She left the house, SITs, Dawn, Willow, and Andrew ensconced in front of the television with Spike, Xander, and Giles to watch over them. Buffy’s steps, once light and energetic, now plodded from cemetery to cemetery as she dispatched demons with no passion, no finesse, just repetitive, numb movements of limbs that felt as if she were walking through quick-sand.

She’d tried to eat, she really had, knowing that her body required fuel for its nightly exertions. But the thought of food right now nauseated her…she was simply too tired to eat. And so she trekked onward, mind focused only on finishing patrol and returning to her home for a few, paltry hours of sleep before doing the entire thing over again.

*

He’d arrived in Sunnydale mere hours after dusk, and he’d parked the car carefully in the garage of the still-deserted mansion before heading out to feed. Two hapless teenagers later, Angelus had found himself in Sunnyrest, always his favorite cemetery because of the numerous crypts to be hidden in. He’d waited, knowing Buffy’s patrol route as well as she did, and it had paid off. He watched her from under hooded eyes as she made her rounds. His lover had changed, and not for the better.

She was wraith thin, as thin as Drusi and and he scowled at the sight. Then she’d paused under a floodlight for a moment and he’d gotten a good look at her. She looked…more dead than he. He reveled in unlife, in killing, maiming, and feeding. She looked as if all the energy had been sucked out of her into something else. She was going through the motions, he could see that, non none of her former spark remained. She looked…old.

Angelus was nonplussed by the situation. He couldn’t actually be feeling…pity for her, could he? After all, demon…heartless…cruel…that was him. He wasn’t full of disgusting love for the Slayer as his alter ego was. No, he didn’t feel like taking her in his arms and kissing her cares away. He was not thinking of whisking her away and feeding and bedding her until she was sated and satiated in every way. No. That wasn’t what he wanted to do to her at all…was it?

He scowled and melted back into the underbrush, unwilling, suddenly, to confront her this moment.

To be continued…