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TITLE:Monster AUTHOR: seraC EMAIL: seraphcelene@yahoo.com SPOILERS: Hellbound ARCHIVING: Essential-Imperfect, Buffy Fiction Archive. All others please ask. SUMMARY: He can feel it behind his eyes. NOTES: Character study. AU during Hellbound. FEEDBACK: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes please! DISCLAIMER: Angel, the series and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Warner Brothers Company, et al. I'm just taking them out for a little exercise. THANKS: Moonwhip, my beta. He can feel it behind his eyes. The creeping, crawling, burrowing essence of what he was and always will be. It squats in the back of his brain, in the spot where his skull curves into his spine. Sometimes it is an overpowering fuck-it-till-it-bleeds impulse. Sometimes it is the merest nudge against his soul, a reminder of his origins. Right now it is more. An emerging insistence on the way things work in the world. Survival that never equals the good, the kind or any of the fine, high ideals meant to identify a Champion. Angel feels it in the rise of his chest; deep and deeper breaths that expand the restlessness prowling the twisty middle of his gut. It knocks on the inside of his forehead and peers out through his eyes. It listens with his ears and, increasingly, it speaks. Through him, for him. It's all the same. Lilah would laugh with disbelief if she could see him now. A not-so white knight, leader of the Good n' Plentys. He thinks she wanted to believe in the illusion of his goodness. In the carefully erected veneer that made him worth the effort of corrupting. Or maybe she wouldn't. Angelus never fails to make an impression. Blood-sucking lawyer. The words were never more true. No one knows the extent to which they are prophetic, or to which prophecy is not something that is destined. Destiny can be written, manufactured, made. If you have the money, the patience, and the time. He knows it like truth. Like he knows the tugging sweetness of baby love, remembers the cutting edges of heart fragments. His love, for a girl and a child, broken. Always broken. Fighting for right and truth and justice is a habit that the hovering presence behind his eyes resists. Every now and then, to relieve the pressure, Angel lets it make the tough decisions. The souless bit of hateful inside that knows how to twist the knife and make it hurt. It is in his bones. Right is merely an abstraction. Black and white in a fairy story that doesn't belong in the World. Reality is made up of shades of grey and not everybody can be, should be, saved. He understands that now. It is a truth like breathing. Like the inhale-exhale of a too-still girl with curling dark hair and a smile like joy. His very own Sleeping Beauty. And he will save her. He is a Champion, after all. He will do the big, important things and he will save the world. What else is there? And he will not allow a new-souled demon with blue eyes drowning in remorse steal what is meant to be his. Destiny may not be real or true, but just in case. Just in case, he can't allow someone else to win the day and capture the prize. There is only one prophecy. One maybe-true truth. And two vampires. Two souls to claim it. The prophecy is not specific. But Angel has time on his side. A century more. The in-the-meantime blemishes left by the way things work in this world won't, ultimately, count. No one is perfect. Everyone stumbles, sometimes. Fred would understand that. If he explained. As Angel steps behind her, her soft, haphazard hair cloaking her fragile shoulders, he knows she would understand. If he explained about Spike and about Buffy and Shanshu. If he reminded her about Connor and Cordelia and the soul-crushing ache of always losing, he knows she would understand. It is his mantra. When Angel reaches out to encircle that pale, elegant neck he tells himself that one day he'll tell Fred everything. One day. Later. When he has nothing to lose and it doesn't matter. He can't let her bring Spike back. There's just too much at stake. end |