Telling Angel
by Lil\'Witch
[reviews]
TITLE: Telling Angel
AUTHOR: Lil'Witch
PAGE: http://lilwitch.cjb.net/
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: The title says it all
STATUS: Complete
DISCLAIMER: Me: Owns nothing. Joss, Mutant Enemy, Fox: Own all recognizable characters and places. AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is set after Chosen, so S7 spoilers ahead, for Angel's season 4 as well! Oh, and many thanks to Bill Gopher for betaing, your words were music to my ears!
~*~
He caught the punch with his upper body, not caring about the pain. The vampire he was fighting was skillful, his fighting technique nearly perfect. his timing, however, sucked. Angel was more than frustrated.
The son he loved so much was forever out of his grasp, the woman he had allowed himself to care for was in a mystical coma with no apparent cure and he hadn't heard anything from Sunnydale and the threat they were about to face when he had left the town two days ago.
So he fought with the force of an angry demon with a soul's passion adding a little ferocity. There came a right punch, aimed at his face - raise an arm to block - don't care about the bruises that would leave - deliver left hook and hold onto the right arm - swirl the other body around - bring your arms around his neck - your hands smooth against the cool skin of his chin before you twist it with enough force to nearly severe the head - the spine and the tissue around it break - you hear it break and tear and rip - it's enough - you hold an unmoving body before it bursts into ashes and you're left with nothing.
"Hey." Angel whirled around as the same wind that carried his opponent's ashes away carried a familiar voice to his ears. She stood at the end of the road, her silhouette a dark shadow. He smiled. And all of a sudden all that nothingness was replaced by this one small girl.
"You kicked the First Evil's butt?"
"And then some."
They walked towards each other and embraced when they met in the middle of the street.
The thought went through Angel's head followed by a wave of disappointment as well as apprehension. Her hands felt warm around his cold body, but they didn't cling to him the way they had during their previous meeting. She was letting him go, both literally and figuratively. His arms wandered over her back until they'd reached her shoulders - his arms stretch - their bodies' connection is breaking - he can see her face - her eyes - the truth. Again he's left with nothing.
"You already figured it out, didn't you?" She asks.
"No more cookie dough?" His comment earned him one of the smiles that had ultimately cost him his soul five years ago.
"No more cookie dough."
The statement hung between them like his arms did, connecting them, but already starting the separation.
"What happened?" He needed to know. Even if he didn't want to hear another word, move another muscle or loose another second of their ever-thinning connection, he needed to know; he was a champion.
"Believe it or not, I had an idea and it worked. We've changed the world, Angel. Right now, hundreds of slayers are awakening, called by a spell from Willow and ready to finally rid this world of all evil."
His eyebrow shot to his hairline.
"Okay, maybe I'm being optimistic."
His eyebrow stayed where it was.
"Okay, okay, the world is doomed, we've merely avoided the next apocalypse, other than that the world is still one step away from destruction."
"What happened?" he repeated.
"Remember that speech Giles loved so much? One girl in all the world.? Well, I figured out that it didn't need to be that way and with the scythe and Willow's mojo we changed the rules. Every potential will be a slayer. We went down. Faith, Spike, the potentials and me. Into the hellmouth and with the help of that amulet you gave me, Spike managed to finally seal it once and for all."
"So Sunnydale is safe now?" Angel asked unbelievingly. He wasn't sure if it was harder to believe that the town that sat atop the mouth of hell was no longer in danger or that Spike had been the one to accomplish it.
She smirked. "Not exactly. It's kinda. blown up." She shrugged and his hands lost some of his grip.
"It's gone?" Suddenly it was a lot easier to believe that Spike had done it.
"Yep. Willow used a spell to get the please-come-back-soon-sign out of the crater; it's all that is left of the town. Well, the sign and us."
"You all made it?"
"No." Her head dropped and he lost sight of her eyes. Another thread cut. "A few of the potentials died. They were. I didn't even have time to get to know them. I pushed it all to this moment, when we won, when they understood what it meant to be a slayer, when they were safe. Now it's too late. But a lot of them survived. More than I ever dared to hope and there are strong. Angel, they are so strong! As strong as I am, as strong as Faith is. They're gonna change the world."
He could hear how proud she was of her new slayers. And she had every right to be, she'd done what no one else had even thought of. SHE had changed the world. And he felt that it might just be a better one.
"We lost Anya." Her words shook him out of his thoughts. The former vengeance demon. He hadn't known her, she was but a picture in his mind. The only thing he knew about her was who loved her.
"How is Xander?"
"One eye and one love short of a happy life." Her words were bitter and he could understand her. "Spike is gone."
"Oh."
"The amulet gave him the power to seal the hellmouth, but also destroyed him. He went up in flames." She seemed to stare at a point far away, right through his chest and the darkness behind him. Then she smiled. "He laughed. And he died doing good, wherever he is he isn't suffering." There was so much conviction in her voice that he believed her.
She looked up at him again and smiled softly. They were getting closer. Getting closer to being further apart.
"And then?" He wanted to take the words back, ask something else, keep her close, pull her back in.
"Then I fell in love." His arms fell to his sides, his features stony, his heart cracking, his soul crying. Too late. Before he could comment on Buffy's revelation she spoke again.
"I've never loved anything or anyone as much as I loved you. I knew, when I was eighteen years old, that there would never be another love like the one you and I shared. That's why it hurt so much when you left."
"But that changed."
"No." He was confused. She wouldn't be here if this didn't concern him and what they had talked about and if that new love was just a passing one it didn't.
"Who? Do I know him?" She smiled that little smile. That smile that
said: I have a secret and it's mine. Then she closed her eyes and her lips moved. They formed one word, soundlessly, before she opened her eyes again. He'd understood her the first time, but when she actually said it, the impact was unbelievably harder.
"Willow."
Silence stretched as she glowed, illuminated by her own feelings for the redheaded witch. For a second her feared he'd burst into flame.
"The love I feel for her- It's so different than anything I ever felt. If it were comparable to what we had in any way. I knew I'd never find another love like you, but I found a different one."
"She makes you happy."
"Deliriously, ecstatically, blissfully, euphorically, joyously happy." She looked up at him and flinched. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I remember how it felt."
"Yeah." Both sighed.
"Willow," he finally said. "I didn't see that one coming."
"Me neither." She smiled and he believed her. All of it. It didn't make it better, but it helped. If that made sense. At least it wasn't Xander.
"When Willow was here and she said she was seeing someone."
She shook her head, answering the question he hadn't asked. "Kennedy. She's one of the potentials. A slayer now." Confusion seemed to be his theme for the night. The way she said it, it sounded like Willow and that. Kennedy were still together. What did that- And suddenly he understood.
Angel laughed. He laughed so much that tears shot into his eyes and his stomach cramped. Buffy just stood there with an unimpressed look on her face. When he had calmed down enough again to look into her eyes without bursting into a fresh set of laughter, he spoke.
"You haven't told her." It wasn't a question. He knew she hadn't.
"Of course not!" She answered, even though it wasn't necessary. And this time both laughed until they needed to sit down, before they fell down. They ended up sitting on the sidewalk, leaning with their backs against the wall of a house, their shoulders didn't touch. They sat there with huge grins on their faces, not looking at each other. Occasionally, air would press against their lips until their released it in another short laugh.
Angel used the back of his hand to wipe away the tears on his cheeks. "So typical." Were his first words.
"What that's supposed to mean?" Buffy asked suspiciously, although the laughter hadn't left her eyes.
"You always rather confronted the vampires than your feelings."
"Hey!" she protested but they both knew that he was right.
"That's gonna be different now."
"I know. ARE you going to tell her?"
"Eventually." She sighed again. "She's happy at the moment. I will get my turn to be the source of her happiness. But there's work to do now. Changes to see through. When I know what city I'll call home for the foreseeable future I will tell her."
It could have been one of her usually stalling tactics, but somehow he believed that it wasn't.
"As soon as you're done baking?"
"As soon as I'm done baking."
As they sat in the dark ally, saying nothing, Angel knew he hadn't lost her. She might not have been in her arms anymore, but she would always be in his heart. And he would always be in hers. Next to Willow. It wasn't a bad place to be.
~*~
The End.