DISCLAIMER: Joss owns them, along with a lot of other folks at FOX, various production companies and a network or two. Joss has publicly stated that BtVS was always intended as a show which would inspire fanfiction. Fanfiction he wanted, fanfiction he’s got. No infringement intended.

RATING: R

SPOILERS: Everything through the end of seasons 5/2.

NOTE 1: Ran in to a bit of trouble when I was calculating the time of the New Moon and the Feast of Hecate. I’ve found three different dates for the Feast, including one in August. Unfortunately, the new moon in August is a few days after the August feast. Sigh. So, pretend that Angel wasn’t telling Buffy about the Feast of Hecate in Part 9, ‘k? Pretend he was referring to the wholly fictional and nonexistent Feast of the Red Scythe. Just because I can’t go back and re-write things.

NOTE 2: This is a fairly short section. I was away from home last weekend, and had a wedding to go to this weekend, which drastically cut down on my writing time. But, I want to keep up the momentum, and continue to post each week until the story is finished. It still has a way to go. And, while this part is not as intense as the last two, I assure you I still have one or two tricks up my sleeve for later sections. (Insert maniacal, evil cackling here. *G*)

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Storming Heaven  part 12

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5 Scene 1

When Angel sought his bed that night, he found, for the first time since he had learned of her death, that Buffy did not haunt his dreams. He woke once, at dawn, an unaccountable sense of rightness filling him, but he slid back into sleep too quickly to analyze it. When he awoke for a second time, the odd feeling persisted. He felt rested, but Buffy’s absence from his dream made him uneasy. By the tenets of the Catholic faith into which he had been born, the soul was indestructible, immortal. And yet, at war with his instinct that all was well, was the thought that her failure to meet with him in dreams portended some harm to her.

Even immortals were preyed upon. A soul as strong as a Slayer’s and as pure as Buffy’s . . .there were creatures of fell power, masters of dark magic, who would delight in having such a soul to torment. Creatures Angel would tear apart with his bare hands, if he had to, in order to keep Buffy’s soul safe against his resurrection of her flesh. Flinging off the covers, Angel quickly rose, dressed, then unceremoniously threw open the door between his room and Lilah’s and stalked inside.

Lilah, reclining in bed, sipped a cup of coffee, one bare shoulder peeping through a kimono of patterned silk as she read over the contracts the demon generals would sign when they formally swore allegiance to Angel. The Senior Partners had dictated certain terms, and she wanted to make sure the language was completely unambiguous . . .or, that any ambiguities would work to the advantage of Wolfram & Hart, rather than to the advantage of the generals. When the connecting door between their suites was flung open, she looked up from her paperwork, raised a brow at Angel’s precipitous entrance then set aside her cup and the contracts as she got to her feet.

"A bit earlier than usual," she smiled, untying the belt of her kimono, and letting the silk slide down her body. Angel reached out a hand before it had fallen lower than her shoulders, and roughly pulled the robe back up, covering her once more.

"You have shamans at your disposal," he said coldly. "I need one who traffics with the dead."

Lila swallowed, trying to hide her disappointment.

"Yes, of course." she said, tying her belt once again. "How soon--"

"Yesterday," he said, and returned to his own apartments.

Lilah stared after him, fighting to get her body’s urges under control. The moment he’d come through her door, she’d grown instantly wet, ready for whatever he wanted to do. It was getting more and more difficult for her to be around him for the business aspects of their partnership. She could be negotiating with a demon for a valuable artifact, and if Angel were in the room, her body would be clamoring for her attention, demanding that she sate its needs with Angel.

Because, more and more, it was clear that Angel was the only one who could. She was totally addicted to vampiric sex: cold flesh soothing her too-hot skin; a cold cock easing the burning at her core; ruthless skill, dedicated to her own pleasure; someone eating her with no need to come up for air.

And, more than any of these, fangs in her throat or her thigh or her breast, her blood being pulled through her veins as she swooned in rapture and lost herself in kisses tainted with her own mortality.

Not that Angel kissed her often. Usually, it was she, in the throes of orgasm, who pulled his head to hers and devoured his bloodstained mouth with hungry kisses. He let her do so, but he never initiated a kiss on his own. No more than he ever took his release with her.

Because, she realized bitterly, of the girl he still loved. The girl who was dead. The one he intended to get back, even if it meant destroying the world.

The one on whose behalf he required a shaman who trafficked with the dead.

For a moment, Lilah thought of telling him she couldn’t find one. But it was pointless. He would recognize that for the pathetic lie it was, and who knew what he’d do to her then? Nothing so pleasant as fucking her to death, she was sure. Reluctantly, she picked up the phone.

**********************

The demon shaman with whom Lilah presented him--a small creature, barely four feet in height, which looked rather like an armadillo walking upright--was nervous. That was a good thing. A nervous shaman was a shaman who believed his powers weren’t sufficient to protect him from a perceived threat. Which meant that the shaman would do everything in its power to placate said perceived threat. As long as that threat was Angel, and the shaman was doing what he wanted, they’d both be happy.

Right now, the shaman looked anything but happy. They were in one of the rooms Wolfram & Hart reserved for such things, a large space in one of the lowest levels of the building, beneath the parking garages and the maintenance closets and storage rooms. Some magics had to be worked in the dark, close to the earth, in caves or in the subterranean dwellings of men and non-men. Wolfram & Hart excelled at providing spaces that must hide from the light of sun or moon. Given the perfection of the space, and the quality of the ingredients with which he’d been supplied, the shaman realized there was no excuse for failing at the task assigned him, and that the vampire was not going to be pleased about his lack of success. The first casting had yielded only vague, contradictory results, the second a few more equally confusing bits of information, and the third proved almost totally unproductive. Only one thing seemed consistent in all three results, and that was perhaps the most confusing part of all.

"Have you found her?" Angel snapped, as the smoke of the latest ritual cleared away.

"Not as such, no, my lord," the shaman stuttered. "But it is only a matter of time--"

"Time? You’ve had plenty of time! I want results, not excuses."

"Well, ah, my lord, the indications are, so far as they can be read, that, um--"

"Tell me!" Angel roared, game-face emerging as the last of his patience evaporated.

"Wherever she is, she’s happy," the shaman blurted out. He immediately cringed away, fearful that his admitted inability to find the precise location of the girl’s soul would evoke the vampire’s rage. The blows it was expecting did not fall, however, and when the vampire spoke again, while there was urgency in his tone, the anger was gone.

"You’re sure about that?" Angel demanded. "She’s happy?" The shaman breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yes, my lord. There is, about the trace of her aura, an indication of content. I don’t know why I can’t locate her in heaven, because that would seem to be the most logical place--"

"It doesn’t matter," Angel said, waving a hand in dismissal. "You may leave me." With a bow, the shaman gathered up his relics and herbs, scurrying to escape the vampire’s presence as quickly as possible. He debated saying anything further, not sure how important it was to the vampire that the girl’s aura didn’t seem quite compatible with a being residing in heaven--it lacked the right resonance of unalloyed rapture--which could well account for the shaman’s inability to pinpoint her precise location on the ethereal planes. But, certainly, she wasn’t in hell or purgatory. Nothing remotely like contentment could be found there. For similar reasons, he had to discount limbo and various other stations of the afterlife. Actually, if the shaman hadn’t been told that the soul he had been ordered to find was that of someone who was undoubtedly and unmistakably dead, he might have speculated that she was still to be found amongst the living. But, the vampire seemed content with the information that had been offered, and the shaman decided to leave it at that.

Angel hardly noticed the departure of the little beast. He was contemplating what had happened. If Buffy was content, that was all that mattered. He was sure she understood his purpose, and he was sure she approved of it. The Powers That Be had seemingly removed her from heaven--perhaps hoping to defeat his purpose, which they must guess--but they could not destroy her soul. Wherever it was, she was content, awaiting him, and, wherever it was, he would find it. Soon, he would restore her soul to her revived flesh, and keep her with him, safe and happy, throughout eternity.

And even eternity might not be long enough for him to prove to her the depth and breadth of his love.

He had told her that he had only loved one person in two hundred and forty-three years. She had been so young then, barely eighteen, and so achingly insecure, even a year afterward, because of the painful lies his demon told her about what had been the most profoundly beautiful and sacred night of Angel’s life. She had been flattered by his words, and reassured by them, but Angel wasn’t sure if she really understood what those words signified.

Two hundred and forty-three years. A number, and rather a large one. But, in terms of a lifetime, it represented far more than the length of his days. The very world Angel had been born into was as alien to Buffy as an isolated culture in some remote, inaccessible, corner of the earth might be. He had been shaped by forces she didn’t really understand: in a society where class, wealth and privilege were all; where the inequality and inferiority of women was accepted as ordained by God; where those who gave an honest day’s work were looked down upon as the vulgar masses; and those who mattered in the world were given to wasting their substance in hard drink and games of chance. It was a society in which the measure of a man was often taken by the number of bottles he could consume and still keep his wits about him; or by his prowess in the bedchamber. By those measures, Angel was not found wanting. But they were not measures that Buffy would apply.

He had played at love with a score of noblewomen, and with more chambermaids, milkmaids, tavern wenches and farmer’s wives or daughters then he could count. Hundreds of women, many of them beautiful or wealthy or sensual or all three at once, and yet none had ever touched his heart.

Then he met Darla one night in an alley. Afterward, he had no heart to touch.

Not because it was impossible for vampires to love: Spike’s love for Dru had been unquestioning, steadfast, devoted. No human ever loved more truly. Angel had known other vampires who were capable of sustaining such devotion for centuries, and many others who experienced love at least fleetingly. After all, what were vampires but creatures of lust, passion, hunger, and what more natural emotion to creatures of such sensibilities than that of love? But it was not an emotion natural to the creature who had once been the boy Liam, and was now the monster Angelus.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years, he had enjoyed himself with Darla, while murdering his way across Europe. The murder had been accompanied by a prodigious amount of rape. The demon within him had reveled in the helplessness and horror of his victims, had delighted in their cries of anguish. Their pain and fear filled him with as much delight as a human might find if the object of his affections declared her love for him. Vampires fell in love with their victims every day. It was one of the reasons they turned them. But none of the thousands of women Angelus had enjoyed ever touched anything in him beside lust and hunger. Not even Darla, who was as perfectly matched to his demon as if she had been designed by the hand of Lucifer to partner him, as, sometimes, Angelus believed she had been.

When his soul was restored to him, it changed who he was, forever. The thoughtless wastrel and rakehell, a spoiled boy with no understanding of the evil in the world, was gone. In his place was a man all too familiar with the ugliness the world held, sunk in sorrow for his own part in fostering that ugliness. Over the course of the next century, hundreds of women came close to him, sensing his pain, drawn to his vulnerability, utterly unwitting of the danger he might yet pose to them. He never allowed them to get as close as they would have liked. And yet, the depth of his despair, the yearning for a comfort he believed beyond his reach, should have made him receptive to whatever tenderness they offered. It did not. No matter how beautiful the women who approached him, no matter their kindness, no matter his desperate need of respite from the intolerable pain of his existence . . .he had never, not for a fleeting moment, felt the least trace of love.

Until he saw Buffy, touched by sunlight, awash in innocence, walking down the steps of her school as her destiny rose up to consume her.

Angel didn’t know he had a heart until Buffy took it from him and claimed it for her own, without ever having set eyes on him.

Angel didn’t know what it was to love and be loved until the first time Buffy lifted her face to his for a kiss.

Angel didn’t know he could find acceptance until Buffy touched the wound on his vampiric face, and told him she hadn’t even noticed.

Angel didn’t know it was possible for love to grow and expand and deepen until he found himself falling ever more in love with Buffy with each passing day.

And, Angel could never have comprehended that it was possible to love Buffy more than he already did, until he was given a day he was not allowed to keep.

In two hundred and forty-three years, he had loved just one woman, Buffy. And if two hundred and forty-three thousand years should pass, he would never love anyone else.

Had Buffy ever comprehended what his few, softly spoken words meant? He doubted that she could. Perhaps she would never fully understand. But he would spend eternity trying to show her how much she meant to him, must always mean to him.

First, though, he had to bring her back.

Her absence from his dream had been troubling, but the shaman’s words were all the reassurance he needed. Angle was sure it was the happiness of Buffy’s soul that accounted for the lightness of his own that he had noticed that morning. But, why had she vanished? He went over everything the shaman had told him, during the rituals and afterward, puzzling over the conundrum until an answer presented it self. When the idea hit him, he smiled. Of course. He had told her that they were only going to wait another week, for the Feast of the Red Scythe, and then they would be together. That must have contented her, and perhaps she was making whatever preparations her spirit needed to make to be rejoined to her flesh. She might well have gone to rest in the aether, to await him.

Reassured that all was well with his love, Angel turned his attention to preparing for her return.

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Still not the end.

FEMFIC     PART 11     PART 13    FEEDBACK

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