SCRIBES OF ANGEL
FanFic
________________________________
Change Of
Fortune
DISCLAIMER: Guess what? *Whispers* They're not mine.
TIMELINE: About five years in the future.
SPOILERS: Only vague.
IMPROV: #15 air - chime - dark - orange
FEEDBACK: Is nice, but you knew that, right?
RATING: PG-13
"In order to have a change of fortune at the last minute you
have to take your fortune to the last minute."
Terry Pratchett, 'Thief Of Time'
Beginning - The Fortune
You spend the best years of your unlife preparing for the
Apocalypse and when it comes, you're not ready.
Oh, the weapons are there, carved and sharpened and shining, and
your friends are mature fighters with a battle-weary, battle-ready glint in
their collective eye, and you've trained and honed and sung badly and saved
souls like crazy but avoided *going* crazy again (pretty much), and come *this*
close to forgiving yourself even if no-one else does (even if the Powers don't)
and yet. You don't know what the hell you're doing.
You're aware of the basic idea; this is hardly your first end of
the world scenario. (You're currently counting seven, during four of which you
were the principle Warrior and one of which you were the principle would-be
destroyer of humanity and have made almost successful efforts to deal and move
on.) However, the Powers That Be have kindly given you to understand, through
mammoth bills for Cordelia's pain medication, a number of conveniently recently
unearthed prophecies, and a lot of helpfully spelt-out omens, that this
Armageddon is in fact The Armageddon, and you are expected to do something
about it.
They have implied it's going to be of Biblical proportions. You
devoutly hope (and isn't that a joke all by itself? If the rosary wouldn't burn
you, you'd leap straight back into Catholicism and the *reassuring* kind of
blind faith) that the Biblical army of angels with flaming swords is planning
on joining the fray, because though your confidence in yourself has grown, you
doubt your ability to successfully battle thousands of demons, sorcerers, evil
people and assorted beings, misguided people and assorted beings and their
kindred. Especially thousands of demons, sorcerers, evil people and assorted
beings, misguided people and assorted beings and their kindred scattered all
over the fair planet in the unfair dimension you and the massed ranks of
humanity call home.
You're not scared of the prospect - what would be the point? If
you die you die, and almost glad of it by the time it comes around.
You're scared it won't be like that. You're scared that the
assault, when it comes, will be... small. Localised.
Personal.
Memories, when a spontaneous, hedonistic demon bothers registering
them, are distinct and intense. You've spent most of your life with those
demonically sharp senses. A human is blind and bland and deaf compared to you.
Your world is a near-incomprehensible blaze of noise and colour. That's why
you've always resisted Cordelia's determination to dress you in clownish
yellows, bright oranges, nice cheerful greens. In a world of colour, you want
to both stand out and hide away. Black is easy.
And it dismisses the mirror problem. Another thing humans can't
understand; how looking in a mirror and seeing nothing there, day after day,
makes you wonder if there's anything there to see. Back when you first regained
your soul, you used to stand in front of a mirror for hours, alternately
loathing the lack of reflection there and staring hard, willing it to come,
just a fraction; for your soul to show through for a second. To offer you some
proof that you were there at all. That you were human.
But of course you weren't, and for all you could be (after this?
Maybe - but for a long time that hasn't been your goal, apart from way down
deep where no-one including you saw), you're not now. If you were human, the
First couldn't have so much interest in you and your most vivid memories from a
few lifetimes of vivid memories wouldn't be of telling a woman you killed you
were sorry and a woman you loved to let you die.
Because that's what you're terrified of, in the glaring light of
day when your body instinctively curls into its bed and your mind shrinks away
from the hungry tendrils you can feel the First reaching out while you sleep.
You usually wake sweating and cold in drenching
body-mind-soul-heart fear those days, occasional nights, and yet you've never
been able to share it with anyone. It began soon after It almost got you with
no visible effort, when you turned willingly and bathed your face in the
soothing dark; you recovered, but your friendships never fully did, and when
the First, energised by your renewed potential not only as an evil demon but as
an evil man, started whispering to you, you didn't - couldn't - say anything
that might damage the fragile trust you'd built with them.
You've never really regretted it. You found your connections to
humanity in other places. The Host, who isn't human but who knows that state as
intimately as if he were; the normal guy at the tiny, barely-afloat gallery a
couple of blocks away from the hotel; the smart-ass teenage witch daughter of
the woman who runs the best-stocked magic shop in LA; and a round of women you
met, loved for a second or a year, and then said goodbye to.
The teenager often affects you most, because you dream of
children. You think there are five; two girls and three boys of varying ages,
always seen laughing or sleeping or sitting quietly (but not for long) through
someone's eyes. You think it's you and sometimes you rush to the mirror,
knowing it's a dream, to see the face looking back at you; and there's nothing
there. The PTB trying to show you your future children? Maybe. It's not clear
enough for you to tell whether it's supposed to be prophetic or wishful
thinking. You're certainly not sure about the latter, because you believe you'd
make a terrible father (look at Dru, at Penn), but you're not sure about the
former... isn't life supposed to be about choice? Even yours.
Yet you know it's not. The path is ordained. You will fight in the
apocalypse. The side you walk on is not. The side of good, of light, of Angel.
The side of bad, of dark, of Angelus or Angel-beast. And in between, the abyss.
Middle - The Last Minute
You hear a chime, startlingly immediate, and instantly your mind
jumps to fanciful conclusions of bells tolling you to heaven or to hell and the
hour being at hand, and behind that the inevitable unwelcome recollections of
solemn church bells, the rings of which you screwed Darla senseless to in the
blood of your village as those same savage deaths were mourned.
(Before you invaded the sanctity of that church, getting a taste
for defiling and reviling God, and revelled in the death screams of the
mourners.)
But you're dragged from those thoughts because there's a lot of
people converging on you tucked away in your favourite corner and you feel
stupid when you realise the sound was the stridency of the rarely-used doorbell
(demons tend not to be so polite).
You accept random hugs, returning them clumsily, uncomfortable
with too much physical contact. Your gaze rakes over the faces without seeing
any of them, but somehow your subconscious recognises them and throws out one
word: Champions.
You have been doing this a while now, and it didn't take you very
long to get a reputation. Mostly peaceful but enterprising demons around LA
started selling your address to whomever asked for it; that led to a lot of
fights, a few tentative alliances, and a couple of friendships. Warriors, in
general, are slow to trust - and even slower to trust those they think they
should be warring against - but the bonds of battle are wrought rapidly to last
for long, and though you didn't talk at length to any of those people, you were
willing to fight alongside them, saved some of their lives.
And now they've come en masse to maybe save yours.
Well, and the rest of the world's, but you get a warm glow you
faintly recall as contentment that they've come at all.
When the crowd disperses a little, whatever companions the
fighters have brought fading away to the kitchen or the bedrooms they appear to
be cheerfully colonising, you're able to make out the individuals as they greet
you and each other. There are wary eyes across rooms and delighted reunions in
the centre.
And at the edge, where you still stand in a slight state of shock,
she comes to you, nervous, watching you carefully to gauge your reaction to her
closeness. It's been a long time since you've experienced it, but your reaction
is pretty much the same; your senses open, recoil slightly at the number of
scents and sights and textures in your formerly peaceful hall, and then
concentrate solely on her.
Vanillasweatmusk. Blondemutedbluegreen. Racingheartbeatmeasuredbreath.
Smoothsilktan. Sweetcopperblood.
Buffy.
You've noted absently that among the retinue that accompanies her
(shrunken; you assume she's left her settled friends with their happy families
behind, or more likely harried them as far out of danger as she could, though
she must know nowhere will be far enough) there is a man who bears the smell of
your mate, and so you act civilised, squashing with effort the demon's
indignation, your own jealousy and ire, and the desire to grab her, kiss her
soundly, and bear her down to the floor oblivious to your surroundings.
Instead, you smile at her, step forward to offer your first true
embrace of the night, and she leans into your arms gratefully, holds you as
strongly as you hold her, and for a moment you believe things might actually
turn out okay, because you always try for optimism when you're with her. She
pulls back slightly, only to stand on her toes and press her forehead against
yours. You bend down to accommodate her and then in one precious moment she
kisses you, with passion and tenderness and it's been a while but you're pretty
sure even still love.
After a second or an hour you separate and you thank her for
coming. She laughs, says she had to, and you experience a fleeting despair that
this is duty for her (but then, how can you expect the end of the world to be
anything else?) until she turns to search the crowd, singles someone out, calls
them over, and you see who it is and wonder how you could have missed the
presence of your Blood, the only one of your line left. You glower at Spike and
get an answering scowl as he lights another cigarette, drops the current one
insouciantly on your pristine floor, grinds it out, and studiously ignores your
strengthened glare.
It turns to an amused, then half-gratified half-viciously
pleasured smile as Buffy explains that Spike is her seer, much as Cordy is
yours, and while Spike growls and glares harder she goes on to give a
half-baked and rambling explanation of how the Powers removed some chip from
him and gave him the visions instead so he wouldn't kill, and how they're
apparently the ultra-painful variety, and then she wanders off to find the
other Slayer - Giles' latest teenaged charge - so the two of you can be
introduced, and you're alone with the only other vampire you know to be
fighting for the side of Good in this battle, so much as you can be alone in a
room filled with chattering, high-energy people.
You stand in silence with him for a moment, and then, as one, you
reach out and clasp arms, touching the veins that run with each other's blood.
It's a simple moment that should have been complicated; you don't trust each
other, you don't particularly *like* each other, but you're fighting the same
fight, the good fight and it's been bloody difficult for both of you to come
into it, and you're going to try damn hard to make sure both of you get out of
it.
He then takes your place away in the corner, chain smoking and
watching the people, forming (if you know Spike, and you do) insanely rash and
incredibly accurate impressions of them all. You circulate, almost comfortable
in a social activity you hate because they're all *your* people, fighters. You
don't know most of them too well, but you understand them. It's a refreshing
change to be with people that kill what goes bump in the night instead of
ignoring it.
You eventually find yourself back in a corner with Buffy and a
cynical sword master named Graeme who you met under unfavourable circumstances
a few years back (he'd stalked you for a week and then tried to kill you) but
became nearly-friends after a long, exhausting, fight. You share battle stories
and shaggy demon tales and compare scars and discuss in hushed tones the coming
fight (which no one is referring to explicitly). Over their shoulders, you
watch the rest of the room, which has divided and is doing much the same; even
Spike is talking to Zoe, a spellcaster whose vulnerable frame and bubbly
personality masks a fearsome power and ruthless willingness to use it.
When you've all trudged up to bed and you're lying awake listening
to the unfamiliar multitude of heartbeats around you, you try not to think that
within the next week, at least some will be dead, or they could all be dead. Or
worse.
You're wrong.
It's within the next day, because you've barely been asleep for a
couple of hours and it's still dark out when you're rudely pulled from slumber
by a masculine, vampiric roar from one end of the hotel and a female scream
from the other and you're already scrambling into clothes before your
sleep-fuzzed mind identifies them: Cordelia and Spike.
You run to Cordelia first, finding her in the corridor outside the
room she's taken over. People are coming at her from all sides, and you
shoulder them out of the way to give her some space.
She gets it quickly when, clutching her head and wincing with
pain, she delivers the Powers' message in a clear, strong voice. You can hear
it being echoed, with more panic, by Spike.
Spike's had a dislike for fire since the day he burned Dru.
You immediately urge everyone out, but they're rushing back to
their rooms and you rue the fighter's instinct that sends them for weapons
before protecting their lives (though isn't it really the same thing), until it
occurs to you that your feet are carrying you straight to your room and then
your weapons chest and then to as many daggers and stakes and axes as you can
manage before, finally, you uncover your sword.
It's of Irish extraction, like you, found selling for an
appallingly low price in an antiques shop you'd felt inexplicably drawn to. You
draw it, dropping the sheath heedlessly and watching for a moment that you
really don't have the way light reflects off it. Badly, that is; it's in no way
a pretty thing, not decorative and shining silver and jewel-encrusted hilt or
any of that crap. This is an unrefined, functional broadsword, and it thirsts
for blood. You've never used it before in pitched battle, fearing,
superstitiously, that if this sword tasted blood while you held it, you would
be drawn to do the same.
In this situation, that's good.
Armed, you race out of the hotel, listening out for heartbeats and
human fear as you go, but there are few and by the time the hotel goes up in
flames you're watching it and feeling the dark energy of the demons surround
you and the Powers That Be are silent as the demons start to come and you start
to fight.
You're not sure how long it goes on, as the demons keep coming and
the spells, which first were light as your own magick-users deflected them,
keep crashing down as they become exhausted or dead. Later, you can find out
and congratulate or mourn (you hope), but now you only curse and dodge the
bolts of pure black energy as well as the blows.
You fight long enough for your movements to owe less to vampiric
strength and skill than to human determination and obstinacy, and then for them
to be more mechanical than flesh; swing, cut, rend, stab, dodge, and then
again. You've lost or used all of your weapons except the sword, and as you expected,
it exults in the spilling of blood, including yours, and you might have
responded to it except you're too tired to respond to anything.
And then, finally, you think there's some kind of respite because
you're still hitting and cutting your sword around, but it's not connecting
with anything and when you chance a pause and wipe the blood out of your eyes,
you see that's because there's nothing to connect with. No demons still stand.
No humans either.
You're standing in a wasteland of slippery blood and fallen
weapons and bearers.
You've won... but, like everything, at a price.
And then, faintly, you make out a sound, right at the edge of your
hearing. Behind you. And you turn, and it's still dark, but your tired eyes
strain, and then they see, and you slide to your knees, defeated in the blood
and bodies you know your ash will soon join, because advancing in the distance
is another demon army.
It's there that you realise this ultimate despair is missing the
one thing that would make it completely unbearable; and then, there it is.
You never realised you were fighting so close to two Slayers, but
there they are; Nicole, the brassy French beauty you only just met, her head
lying in unmistakably wrong alignment with her body. And in front of her, just
slightly, as if she'd tried to protect the younger Slayer, Buffy, blood
smearing in her hair and on her chest and across her stomach and over her face
and you crawl over and pull her body into your lap with shaking arms, unable to
do anything but stare at her ravaged face in horror.
And that is when the First attacks you.
You feel it as a shockwave through your entire system which seems
to carry you out of your body and onto some plane as dark as anywhere you've
ever been, blacker than hell, and it's deathly silent, deathly because
somewhere under your range of hearing you *know* that there are flesh-tingling
screams because you made those once and, more, you made other people make them
and you thought you remembered everything from Angelus' reign over Europe with
perfect clarity but you're only now realising it was only ever *your* clarity
and then every victim you created screams at once.
You try and cover your ears but you can't because you've no ears,
try and yell yourself, sure your misery could block out theirs, but you can't
because you've no mouth. You're drowning in the screams as if they were the
murky, viscous blood you drank down and relished, which you remember now and
yearn to throw up even as you yearn to taste it again, and then over the screams
or under them or through them, you're not really sure but it's clear as that
bell which you now know *was* signalling you to doom, the First speaks to you.
It offers you silence and you assume that means death and you're
about to accept because the world is fucked anyway and what you do doesn't
matter, what you do never matters, and some spark of light inside you demands
to know what It means and the First knows about the spark and brings the
darkness to bear on it as It answers you deafeningly, It's voice causing you
physical pain though you've got no physical presence, that It means surrender.
You don't know what It means because you have surrendered, your
body and your mind because you'll never be able to stop hearing the screams
now, and It says nothing, just waits and watches because whether it takes it a
thousand seconds or a thousand years it has you now. The darkness in your soul
has come out and mixed with the darkness around you, the darkness of the
screams and your murders and your deathsdeathsdeaths and your father is there
looking at you because he always knew you would come to this and you can see
the battlefield and everyone is dead and they knew you wouldn't save them, you
didn't save them and you failed and what are you for if not for death?
Rebellion.
The darkness sucks you in and then lets you surface, lets you
think for a moment, lets the spark ignite before the screams and now the faces
as well taunt you and everything you see is painted gaudy crimson, slashed
across with dripping dark red the way you carved a scarlet wound on the world
and then your father is there again and then your sister and as your soul wails
at the sight of the sister you loved so well and killed so well your father is
there and your sister is there and the scarlet slash is there across her back
and then across your back as your father shouts and you remember saving her and
then you remember saving Cordy and Bethany and Faith and you can't save
yourself but it doesn't matter as long as you can do-
THIS and you come out of the darkness for a second but that's long
enough and just for a moment you collect all the faces and all the tears and
all the gratitude from when you, *you* finally got it right, you grab all that
and throw it at the First and then you don't know how but you *shove* because
you want it out of your mind and as you sink back down into the darkness and
let yourself relax and drown you wonder at how surrender is blindingly white.
End - The Change
When you feel the First again, lurking at the edges of your mind,
you feel more distress than any you've ever known, more than even that
benchmark you created... how long ago? The screams seemed eternal. You've
failed again, and this wasn't for one you loved or a duty you were given it was
for *you* and you weren't strong enough, and so it takes you an endless moment
to realise the First is loud because the demon is suddenly silent.
Then your baffled, worn out mind processes - not silent.
Absent.
The First slips away, satisfied (humans are Its strength and
favoured playground, after all) and though you register its disappearance with
the implicit promise of return, the residue it leaves it nothing compared to
the demon's sibilant whispers and so you can ignore it, for now.
Ignore it in favour of the rays of sunlight crawling sluggishly
onto the battlefield that suddenly doesn't look so much like a battlefield,
illuminated because the air above it is glowing and smelling faintly like
ozone. You watch the pale dawn encroach on the empty horizon (you don't
question the disappearance of that second army, when you briefly remember it)
in a state of beyond calm; a languid appreciation of the sunrise you haven't
seen for so long and acceptance of your fate in it.
It's not until you don't burst into flames that you realise that
that fate is no longer your fate, and you look placidly into the sunlight and
realise you're breathing.
And when you look down at the blood-soaked woman in your arms, so
is she.