Disclaimer:
Angel is not mine. Nor is Doyle or his bits of dialogue thrown into the mix.
Those who do own them know exactly who they are.
Distribution:
If you have anything of mine and want it, go ahead. Anyone else, just ask first.
Spoilers:
IWRY, Hero (but changed) and Birthday with all sorts of other references thrown
in for fun.
Rating:
PG-13 I guess
Author's
Note: I had another one of those moments of a short story that refused to
leave me alone. This one's a bit odd for me - intentionally unrelieved Angel
angst. It's a prologue of sorts to the AU presented in Birthday. It takes place
right after what would have been the episode Hero in that alternate universe.
Hopefully it will all make sense. Everything in parenthesis are direct quotes
from episodes. Oh, and this was also a bit of an experiment in narrative
voice...so hence the present tense weirdness.
Special
thanks to the Angel Fanfic Workshop... I didn't take all of the suggestions, but
the feedback was a huge help. This was the first thing I ever sent there, and I
think I'm sticking around. :)
Feedback:
Please! Even if you hate it, I'd like to know why.
The darkness of the room is absolute, as only a room without windows can be. As it should be. He just sits there, not bothering to turn on the light. He doesn't care. He can see just fine in the darkness, and right now artificial light is a human convention he can do without. Angel's not human, after all. In moments like this, he wonders why he ever bothered pretending.
("...and you can sit in the dark alone.")
There is a bottle of whiskey and a container of blood sitting in front of him. He pours each into their own glass and simply stares at them for a moment. They just sit there, untouched, side-by-side on the table. There is nothing comforting or beautiful about them at the moment, nothing poetic. They just are. Hunger and need.
("...I'm still going to celebrate with a drink down at the pub...")
Their joint smell hits him hard. The blood both inflames him and disgusts him. He needs it to live, to heal the night's injuries, and he hates himself for that. It smells like life and like death. And its taste.... He needs it, but it never quite sates the hunger.
The whiskey is different. It smells like memories. Old memories. Memories of home, and a young man who was drunk when he went willingly into a vampire's arms. New memories, of a friend who laughed over drinks at a local bar, proud of a job well done. Memories that he's here to forget.
He swallows half the contents at once. The whiskey is a searing heat down Angel's throat, a stream of fire inside a block of ice. Then the ice consumes it and he's nothing but cold again.
He wonders if he's ever been this cold.
Angel knows the answer to that after a moment. Not even a week ago. When he learned once again what it felt like to be actually warm, and he gave it up. When Buffy turned and walked away, ignorant of what he'd done for her.
("See, I would have chosen the pleasures of the flesh over duty and honor any day of the week. I just don't have that strength.")
That's part of why he keeps to the dark now. He doesn't want to see the table where he and Buffy shared a passionate reunion.
He doesn't want to see the kitchen where Doyle stood and told him the story of his life.
He doesn't want to see the chair where he sat and told Doyle his own story of a day discarded.
Though it was less than a week ago, the memories of that single day are already fading. A dream, overwhelmed by the harsh realities of the last twenty-four hours.
("The good fight, yeah? You never know until you've been tested. I get that now.")
Angel can see it clearly, as if he is still standing on the freighter, watching certain death come to claim him. The Scourge's device had cast an eerie light over the entire scene, a light that's burned into Angel's memory. He still sees Doyle in that moment of decision, and still misses the punch that came out of nowhere. Angel had gone sprawling backwards, more in shock than anything else. But fate had worked against him; instead of getting right back to his feet, instead of stopping Doyle, he'd landed on some demon's discarded weapon. It had pierced his back, keeping him in place those vital extra moments. But even with all of that, the pain had been dull when compared to the shock.
He had been so certain that this was his death. And he'd been ready...
Yet no matter how much he wants to change it, the events in his mind play out the exact same way.
Doyle had leaned over him for a moment. He'd leaned so close that through the shock and the pain Angel had the bizarre thought that Doyle was thinking about CPR...or a kiss. The first, utterly useless on a vampire. The second, never a dynamic in their relationship.
He did nothing, though. He was so close that Angel could feel Doyle's breath over his lips. He'd smelled like only Doyle could smell: the sharp undertone of demon and the superficial hint of whiskey.
"I'm sorry," he'd whispered.
Angel had been bewildered, about to ask him what he could possibly be sorry for...
And then he'd leapt.
Angel can still see the glaring white light, can still hear his own scream echoing in his ears. He's certain he'll be seeing that image forever, past the darkened room and the two glasses on the table.
He's still wearing the same blood soaked shirt. It sticks to his back as he drains the glass of blood. He doesn't care that he needs this to heal. At the moment, staring at the blood-coated glass, he has only one thought.
There wasn't even enough of Doyle left to bleed.
He wonders, briefly, what he's supposed to tell his friend's mother. Or his ex-wife, who Angel met briefly only weeks before. Who will arrange the funeral when there isn't even a body to bury?
("Harry is right. This stuff does me no good.")
He thinks about picking up the phone to call her. To call Buffy. To call anyone, just to hear a friendly voice. But there's no one to call, no one to talk to. And even if there were, would he be right to do so?
It would do no one any good, and he squashes the idea before it can take hold.
Why hope, when all you get is disappointed?
Why touch, when your hands are covered in blood?
Why feel, when all you get is hurt...?
He reaches for the second glass and downs the rest of the contents in a single swallow. He pours the whiskey again. He knows it's not enough to get him drunk, no matter how much he wants to. It would take a lot more alcohol than he has to get this vampire as drunk as he wants to be.
But he doesn't do things halfway. He never has and he never will.
("Once upon a time there was a vampire. And he was the meanest vampire in all the land. All the other vampires were afraid of him, he was such a...bastard.")
If you're going to disappoint your father, why not really be the death of him?
If you're going to be evil, why not as well be feared across a continent?
If you're going to give up love, why not remove any future chances for it to flourish...?
He thinks he might be starting to feel the effects of the alcohol now. After all, he can't think of what he did recently that cost him his first - only - real friend. Surely the Powers wouldn't have brought Doyle into his life just to remove him again so quickly.
He feels like he'd just started to know who Doyle really was.
Is this how it is going to be from now on? Is every person he reaches out to destined to leave or to die? He'd been alone for nearly a century. Why did it leave him feeling so empty now?
("It's about reaching out to people, showing them that there's love and hope still left in the world.")
He never had someone to lose before.
"Damn you."
It's a harsh whisper in the dark, silent room. He doesn't know who he's cursing. Himself? That's a bit redundant. He's already been to Hell. And even if he hadn't, he's pretty sure that right now he's as close to Hell as he can get without actually being in a demon dimension.
Angel thinks about cursing those who got him here. Destiny, fate...powers.... But cursing them means cursing all of those they had sent to him, and he's not ready to do that. He'd be cursing Whistler, who got him off the street and introduced him to his only love. He'd be cursing Doyle, who kept him connected to something, who had been his friend. He could never curse Doyle for that.
("Are you game?")
But he's had enough. They've asked him for sacrifice, and he's given. He's lost his life and his friend's life in one week, and he just can't do it anymore. He has nothing left to give.
He's struck by an odd image that forces a bitter laugh from his throat. He sees himself like a metal beam, made to bend in an earthquake. There's a point where the stress is too much, where there's no give left, and the slightest bit of additional pressure will make it break.
He's like that beam, he thinks, trembling just short of the breaking point. But he won't break. There is nothing more they can do to him now.
It hits him suddenly, with the force of a semi-truck to the chest. It tears through him, nesting in his skull and shredding it from the inside. With the tiniest part of his brain not occupied by agony and vision, he thinks bitterly that he never fully understood Doyle until this moment.
Blood and pain.
"Oh god, get away from me....
Flash of claws and fangs.
Numbers. 2. 7. 9. 0.
"No, please...."
Blood.
And pain.
It passes differently than it hit him, subsiding in lesser and lesser waves. Angel finds he's lying on his back on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor. The glass he was holding has shattered. The shards cut into his palm, blood and whiskey mixing.
That pain, and the pain echoing in his skull, is nothing compared to the empty, lost pain that suffuses his entire being.
There is no going back from this.
He won't even admit to himself that he'd been hoping there was some way to get Doyle back. He needed someone to tell him where to go and what to fight, he would have argued. He needed his friend, he would have left unspoken. There is nothing left now but the shattered remains of dreams.
He climbs slowly to his feet, ignoring the throbbing in his skull and the stinging in his palm. Ignoring, too, the images that linger in his mind, he reaches for the glass that's still in one piece. He pours the whiskey again. It mixes with the dregs of blood at the bottom of the glass - a murky, dead color.
He's tired. He's too tired to be a Warrior. He's too tired to think about the lives at stake. He just pours himself another drink and thinks about what he's lost.
("We all got something to atone for.")
He's too tired to care.
Yes, I want feedback.
That was pretty obvious, wasn't it?
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