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 that would inspire fanfiction. Fanfiction he wanted, fanfiction he’s got. No infringement intended.

RATING: NC-17, eventually. This part R for possibly disturbing images

SPOILERS: Everything through the first five seasons of BtVS, the first two of Ats.

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Storming Heaven  part 2

In heaven, there are no tears, save those of joy. Nor is there sorrow, nor is there pain. In heaven, souls commune in endless songs of praise and gladness and they dance to the music of the spheres. Heaven is a warm place, to those who have known too much cold, and it is a place of coolness to those who have been surfeited with warmth. It is filled with the sounds of laughter and music and it is filled with peaceful silence; it burns with celestial brightness and it is wrapped in soothing twilight. It is all of those things at once and it is all of those things forever and unendingly. In heaven, the divisions so important on earth are, not forgotten, so much as understood in the full absurdity of their triviality. So it is that in heaven, the repentant murderer is forgiven and embraced by his victim, embattled soldiers feast with those that slaughtered them, bitter enemies join arms and shake their heads in amusement at the follies that kept them apart in life. Male, female, race and ethnicity, believer and heretic, master and slave, oppressor and oppressed--they are nothing in heaven save garments long out grown and dimly remembered. Even the souls of demons, for such demons as had souls, are not despised there. In heaven, all dance together in the illimitable measures of rapture. And those who are parted from those they loved in life, even those who have been sundered from the other halves of their souls by the veil of death, cannot lament. What is a lifetime but the blink of an eye in eternity? The division is not long, and cannot be regretted, for it will soon be healed and thenceforward be forever past sundering.

And yet . . .

There is one soul in heaven--one amongst the teaming, joyful billions in their ecstatic dance and triumphant choir--whose happiness is just a tinge less than complete.

Like the others, she dances, and sings and laughs and her heart is full. She has danced with the soul that she once called "mom" and with the souls that she once called "friends" or "cousin" or "sister Slayer." She has understood that the love she felt for them before was merely a shadow and precursor of the love that suffuses her now. The burdens weighting her in life have not only been lifted, they have been turned to delight. The stars are her playthings and the moon is a bauble with which she may adorn herself. She can hold the sun in the palm of her hand, or she can dive within it and bathe in its incomparable fire. She has illimitable time for this ecstasy and can barely remember anything before . . .

. . .save for some tiny part of her that does remember, and knows that it is she herself who is less than whole.

It is a small thing, but it is there, and it is a wrongness in heaven, which, she understands, has been intended and is in fact a rightness. So, she continues her dance and her song and waits in infinite patience for the resolution that she knows must come, as it comes to all those who wait, in heaven.

And in the antechamber of heaven, where no song comes, and no hint of laughter intrudes, another soul screams in pain and unlooses a sword.

Once, Angel might have shuddered in revulsion at the thing he released, coiled like a serpent at the end of the steel tang of the gim. Now, unmoved by the greedy hunger he sensed within it, he observed it dispassionately as it unfurled in all its sleek and terrible darkness. The blade felt the pull to freedom, and announced its long-awaited liberty with a sibilant hiss foul enough, menacing enough, greedy enough, to strike cold terror into the heart of the most vile demon living. The point of the blade curved back, regarding the one who had dared call it forth. Unflinchingly, Angel stared into the red eyes of the beast he had awakened, smiling grimly as be-fanged jaws opened wide before him. With a snap of his wrist, Angel directed the gim of Gang-Ying toward the viridian and crimson light comprising heaven’s antechamber, and bade it feed. . .

The dance in heaven proceeded in its unending measure, as the choir sang its unceasing praise. All was as it had been for an eternity before and would be for an eternity to come.

Until something of the brightness was of a sudden wrenched away.

There was a crunching, as of jaws closing, and a tearing, as of rending silk, and where there had been radiance, there was red-eyed, hissing darkness, and something following behind. The unending measure stumbled and came to an end. The unceasing praise faltered, and ceased. For an infinite moment, all was silence.

Then, with a shriek, the darkness fell upon them.

A new thing entered heaven, and it did not come alone: where there had been only joy, peace, rapture, came now sorrow and pain. The bright souls pulled away from it in confusion, and something they dimly recalled as fear. Snapping jaws devoured the very fabric of heaven, and darkness leaked in like a plague.

There was one more thing, behind the darkness, wielding it; a figure of power and rage. It was his pain the souls felt, his sorrow before which they trembled. He did not come silently, but roared a name, like a battle cry.

"Buffy!"

A multitude of souls had been called by that name, but only one associated this terrible cry with herself. And while all the souls within sound of that cry fled before the agony it held, that one soul was transfixed, and stood, her peace irretrievable broken, her joy irretrievably fled, recognizing the suffering thus given voice as her own suffering.

She had to be here, Angel knew. There was no place else for her to be. Even souls resting in the aether, on the outermost reaches of heaven, as his had been, were yet within the purview of heaven. He swung the darkness, scattering countless bright, shining things before him. They were barely discernable as having once been living beings, but he knew that none of them was the one being he sought. He knew that when he found her, he would recognize whatever shape her soul bore. Where was she? He had to make her hear him, come to him. He called to her again.

"Buffy!" The sound smote at her heart, bringing her, weeping, to her knees. A billion other souls swirled in panic around the spreading darkness, darting hither and yon to keep out of its path. Their brightness dazzled, and Angel could not see the one spark of brightness he most desired.

For hours, as time is counted on earth, Angel stormed through heaven, searching the darkness wrought by his own hand, but there were too many bright things between him and the bright thing he sought, and heaven itself was too illimitable, for him to find her. And she was too bowed by grief, too paralyzed by his pain, to move toward him.

"Buffy!" Louder, now, because she had not yet come to him, and surely there must be some mistake? Surely she could not have been sent . . .elsewhere? The thought increased his agony beyond the limit even he, who had endured a century of torment in hell itself, could endure.

In this agony, he kept searching, unable to rest or cease, driven onward by immitigable grief until fully a night and a day and a night again had passed in the city in which he had most recently made his home. Ultimately, the limit of even his unnatural endurance was reached, and Angel snapped back the gim restraining it from its long feeding. Ever voracious, it snarled at the interruption of its meal, but Angel had a different banquet in mind for it now. Gathering the remnants of his strength, Angel prepared to strike once more.

"BUFFY!" he shouted, from the depths of his suffering soul. In one mighty thrust, Angel drove the gim downward, cleaving the heaven in which he stood, the earth below it, and the hell beneath that. Such was its nature, that directed to do so by the hand that held it, the gim could gnaw through all of them, and, such was its nature, that in doing so, it gnawed through time itself. Angel’s lament echoed through heaven and hell, back to the beginning of the earth, and forward to its ending. And, in doing so, it became the very definition of grief and loss against which grief and loss would always be measured. Souls in heaven cowered away in distress. Those on earth who heard it could not comprehend it, and dismissed it as nightmare and illusion. And those in hell knew a moment of gratitude that their own torments were not so great as that of he who made this cry.

With a last despairing moan, Angel pulled the gim free, and forced it, protesting, back into its scabbard. A final, useless, look at what he had left of heaven, and he flung himself earthward, into a rift of darkness.

In heaven, the radiance was quickly restored. The confused souls calmed, and, this being heaven, quickly forgot the transient sorrow to which they had been exposed. Dance and song resumed, the participants no longer remembering there had been an interruption.

Save for one soul, who remained, weeping.

Her tears had a weight unaccustomed in heaven, and she began sinking through the bright radiance. She did not sink long, and shortly came to rest, in some place that was not heaven, but yet was not far removed from it. Looking about, she found herself in a room composed of viridian and crimson light, shaped like a single human tear.

"Why couldn’t I go to him?" she asked. Unlike Angel, whose soul was still trapped in flesh, her naked soul could perceive the shapes before her, or rather, the one shape that was many.

This we could not permit, a voice as rich and full as the flowering earth said gently, taking on the shape she had known as "mother". She considered the answer. A voice like wind, shaped like the one she called "Giles" whispered to her, a voice like crackling fire whom she had once called "Spike" said more, a voice tinkling like a fountain shaped itself now like "Dawn" and now like "Willow," and told her secrets. She sighed, understanding.

"But, you must know . . .I cannot lose him again."

It has happened as it was meant to be, They reminded her, taking Xander’s form to do so. She bowed her head, realizing They only spoke the truth.

You are no longer fitted for heaven, the earth voice observed, returning to Giles’ form.

She smiled sadly. "Was it your intention that I should be?" she asked. They gave no answer.

You may wait here, for what will be, the earth offered, instead.

Her laughter was as sad as her smile. "Where else would I go?" They withdrew, and she took her rest in the soothing light, waiting for what would be.

Angel tucked and rolled as he landed in the tunnel beneath the airport. Exhaustion kept him on his knees, despair overwhelming him. He no longer screamed her name, but wept it brokenly.

He had been so wrong. He’d had his epiphany, and he’d got it utterly, completely, amazingly wrong. There was a grand plan; it just didn’t matter, to those drawing it up, what it cost in human suffering. The smallest act of kindness wasn’t the greatest thing in the world; it was the most pointless. Nothing human beings did mattered: it would inevitably end in death, sooner or later. The only difference was how much suffering you endured along the way. The younger you died, the better off you were, and the most lucky were those who had never been born at all. Wes had let Virginia go because she couldn’t accept the danger he would always be in. It was more important to Wes to fight the good fight than to find whatever happiness this crap hole of a dimension could offer him. Cordy, too, had given up love so that she could continue to help the helpless. What was that going to get them but an early grave for Wes and more unbearable headaches for Cordy? How soon would it be before the pain of the visions killed her, or drove her mad? Before . . .he’d been certain that The Powers That Be wouldn’t let it come to that: they’d relieve Cordy of her burden, and find another way to tell Angel whatever it was they wanted him to know. He realized now that her suffering was utterly unimportant to them. They were indifferent to it, just as they were indifferent to Gunn’s increasing alienation from his friends, the pain he suffered when he couldn’t save them. Angel’s own suffering had continued, not, as he had long believed, because he deserved it, but because The Powers That Be simply didn’t care how much he suffered so long as he did what they wanted.

Just as They hadn’t cared about Buffy.

For one hundred years, he’d wallowed in guilt for the pain and death he’d wrought. For the past five, he’d tried to make up for it. What a joke. What a huge, colossal mistake. If the earth were indeed being run by a bunch of indifferent, sadistic bastards who didn’t even care about the suffering of their own servants, if the good continued to suffer and die while the wicked prospered, then maybe the world would be better off gone. Maybe the best thing Angel could do for his friends was to put them out of their misery, quickly.

Trembling, Angel gathered the strength to stand. Looking about him, he realized that the rift between heaven and earth was already healed. Bitterness crept over his heart, and renewed his determination. He could never restore Buffy to the life she had known, or the life she had wanted. He understood now that both were an illusion of happiness that ultimately robbed her of whatever meager joy she had been permitted. No, he could not and would not return her to such a thankless existence. But, he could do something else. He could free her from the bondage in which she was held, and he could spend an eternity making up to her for every moment of pain she had ever known. He had stormed heaven, and it had not released to him its prize. Did They think he would rest there? They would learn otherwise. He would lay siege to heaven, as he would besiege both earth and hell, if that proved needful, until one or all of them yielded her up and returned her to him.

And then he would take hold of her, and never release her again.

The gim humming at his side in pleasure at its meal, Angel stalked off to the one place he knew he would find the assistance he required.

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Still not the end.

FEMFIC    PART1       PART 3a         FEEDBACK

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