BECOMING, PART II

“Buffy?”

What was happening? What was he doing? What was she doing? She stood over him, a sword in her hand. A strange light flashed off it, glinting into his eyes.

He hurt all over. Someone had beaten the shit out of him and he could feel it. It must have been her--there was no one else there and she was perfectly capable.

Her jaw had been set when he’d looked up at her, her eyes flaring with rage. Now the rage faded, replaced by confusion. The sword shook a little in her hand.

“What’s going on?” he said. He pushed himself to his feet. He felt strange, as if his body didn’t belong to him.

“Angel?” Her voice was small and wounded. Something in her face seemed to break, to shatter almost, as she lowered the sword. He smelled blood, looked down and saw it, trickling down her arm through a tear in her sleeve.

“You’re hurt.”

She looked down at the cut blankly as her touched her arm. Had he done that to her? His head was beginning to hurt with the effort to remember . . . anything.

She took a step closer and he reached for her, pulling her close. Something was wrong, so very, very wrong. “Buffy, God.” He clutched at her. She was the only thing here he understood. “I . . .I feel like I haven’t seen you in months. My God, everything’s so muddled, I . . .” She softened in his arms and he felt a sob shake through her body as her hands clutched at his back.

After a moment she stepped back and looked into his eyes. Her face was covered with tears.

“What’s happening?”

“Shhh.” She touched her fingers to his lips. “Don’t worry about it.”

He let her kiss him. Nothing else made sense. What the hell had happened? He remembered . . . What did he remember?

He remembered making love to her. He remembered thinking he’d never experienced anything so beautiful in his life. And he remembered waking up with her warm and soft next to him, and the deep, incredible feeling of love, and peace, and pure joy that had settled over him--

And then, strangely, the taste of blood in his mouth.

What the hell had happened?

He blinked, looking at her. There was something horrible in her eyes, something so broken and sad he had no idea what he might do with it.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you . . .”

And there was a sound behind him. He wasn’t sure what it was, lacked the strength to turn and look. But it made something cold prickle in the pit of his stomach.

God, what had happened? What had he done?

Her fingers brushed over his lips. “Close your eyes,” she whispered, and he did, because he trusted her, because he loved her, because the sickening sound behind him told him something was terribly, terribly wrong and the cold feeling in his gut told him he’d had something to do with it.

She kissed him again and he tasted tears on her mouth. Why was she crying? Why was she letting go of him? He wanted her back, warm and soft in his arms--

The pain caught him by surprise. Vicious, slamming pain to his chest, straight through his heart.

His eyes jolted open and he stared at the sword protruding from his chest. He could find nothing inside him to make a voice with and his mouth came open in shock and horrible, horrible pain. The hilt of the sword began to glow.

And he remembered. In that single, agonizing second, he remembered everything.

He had lost his soul. He had become Angelus.

And now he was dying.

He felt the life slip out of him and with his last fragment of strength he reached out to her. “Buffy.”

He wanted to tell her he loved her, that he understood, but it was too late.

It was too late, and as the world faded around him, the last thing he saw was her weeping, pain-wrung eyes.

She sat on the bus, staring straight ahead. She couldn’t even look out the window. The sunlight and the bright green grass, the blue of the sky, reminded her of things she would never have. Things they never could have had, even if it had been different.

There were no tears on her face, or in her eyes. It would have been superfluous, because her whole body was tears. Her skin, her bones, her heart, her soul. Her lungs full of suffocating tears.

The worst part was her memories. They had been forever shattered, forever changed. Until today, she could have remembered him always as he had been when he had loved her. Fierce and dark, but hers. She could have held onto the innocent times when she’d had no idea what loving him truly meant. Or to the joy of giving herself to him, those moments, those heartbeats, that rhythm and that power.

When she’d taken up the sword against him she’d told herself that she would not be killing Angel. Angel had been dead for a long time, murdered by the demon Angelus, murdered by the gypsies who had cursed him over a century before. She could have lived with that. She’d had her time with Angel, and in the end she would have saved him from what she knew he would never have wanted to be.

But it hadn’t happened that way, and now whenever she tried to summon his face it was always the last face she’d seen. Mouth open, eyes full of shock and pain. There had been no time for him to remember, no time for him to understand.

And now, forever, he would live within her memory.

Always dying.

GRADUATION DAY, PART II

She would not let him die. She was the Slayer, he was the vampire--it was about time he figured out who was in charge of this situation.

But he could be so damned stubborn.

“Please . . .” His eyes implored her, but the tears in them did nothing to soften her resolve. She would not, could not let him die. If he needed her blood, then he would get it. She would just have to trust him not to kill her.

She hit him once. He came up, his face still sheened with sweat. For a split second she wondered if she would end up killing him herself, but then she hit him again. It took him a little longer to straighten, but when he did he was still Angel. One more time.

Third time the charm. He was vampire.

She stared into his yellow eyes and set her jaw. She grabbed him by the hair and shoved his face against her throat.

A little voice in her head--a voice that sounded oddly like Wesley--said this is not what Slayers did. They did not offer their blood to vampires no matter what the circumstances.

No other choice.

He hesitated, but only a moment. Then she heard his growl, and he took her.

She gasped. Somehow she had never imagined it would hurt this much. Sure, when the Master had bitten her it had hurt like hell, but he'd been evil.  He'd wanted to cause her as much pain as possible. This was Angel, and Angel would never hurt her.

He hurt her. His fangs sunk deep and hard into her flesh. Her head spun at the awful pain and the tearing sounds as his teeth found firm purchase. Her legs went out from under her and he fell forward with her. As they hit the floor he clenched down harder, biting again, deeper.

God, it hurt. She wanted to scream but there seemed to be no breath left in her, as if he sucked it out of her with her blood. Surely those noises, the awful animal sounds next to her ear, weren’t him, weren’t Angel. Her vision went red and she pushed against him but he was anchored over her and his teeth were so deep in her throat she thought they might never come out. She drew her knees up against his hips. She had held him this way with her body once before. He’d penetrated her then, too, but not like this. She kicked out and her foot hit something. Wood splintered.

His mouth dragged at her. Her vision had gone splotchy, red and black and useless. She was all touch and sound now, the press of his hard chest against her breasts, the awful ache of his teeth in her throat, the sucking, tearing sound of his feeding.

Did he have any control at all? Had the human part of him been too sick, too wounded, to counter the animal?

If not, she was going to die. He would live and she would die.

I guess it’s fair, she thought vaguely, as her vision went completely black. I killed you first.

“It is never over. I won’t let you die.”

He couldn’t do this, couldn’t drink her, but he could see in her eyes that was exactly what she intended to make him do. He should run, out the door, into the sun, before she made him kill her. But he couldn’t move. Partly because he was so weak he could barely stay on his feet.

Partly because he wanted her.

“Please . . .” One last try but he knew she wouldn’t listen. So why was he still standing here? Why didn’t he run? Wouldn’t he rather die than see her die?

Please don’t do this to me.

She hit him, hard, and his head spun. He felt the rage come up but he fought it back and faced her again. You can’t do it you can’t do it you won’t make me . . . She hit him again. Again he fought, though the taste of his own blood in his mouth made him want hers. He could barely think through the pain and he felt disconnected from his body, the result of the fever and the poison raging through him.

She hit him the third time and something rang in his head. A voice, the demon, using Jenny Calendar’s face. “Sooner or later, you will drink her.”

He changed with a lurch but even then the demon inside wasn’t enough to make him take the final step. She had to do it for him, grabbing him and shoving his face against the curve of her throat.

Still, he hesitated. Even with the smell of her skin in his nostrils, the beating sound of her blood in his ears. But the weakened state of his body roused his instinct, the need to live, and the animal inside him could smell only one thing in her blood--survival.

He bit.

He hadn’t tasted live human blood in a long, long time--not as himself, not as Angel. Now it poured down his throat, hot and thick, not cold and sticky like the animal blood he’d survived on. And not just live human blood. Slayer blood. It had a muskiness to it that reminded him of the smell of Buffy’s skin.

God, it was good, and he felt the poison and the pain subside as he drew more and more of it into his mouth. It came so fast he couldn’t swallow it all and it oozed hot against his lips. He clutched her small body to him, bound to the pulse in her throat.

When he felt her begin to weaken he bore her down to the floor. Too much too much you’re taking too much let her go . . . But the poison wasn’t gone yet. He needed more blood and the instinct that made him want to live made him bite harder and deeper into her. Her pulse slowed inside his mouth. She struggled weakly under him, her knees pressing against his hips. What he wouldn’t have given to be inside her right now but this was almost as good, almost as good as being snugged deep inside her body while her pulse beat around him there instead of here against his tongue. . .

Who was he kidding? This was better. This was what he was made for.

She had stilled beneath him. The fact struck him suddenly, like being slapped across the face. He shoved himself away, her blood still filling his mouth. He swallowed the last of it as the animal faded and he felt his face change. He turned toward her, barely registering the absence of pain in his own body.

“Buffy?” She lay still but her lips were still pink. He allowed himself a moment of relief before pushing across the floor to her side. “Buffy. . .”

Her lips moved, shaping his name, but no sound came out. The awful wound at her throat still oozed blood. He scooped her up in his arms and ran with her, out into the darkness.

END.