Entry tags:
Fic: Divided Destiny. Chapter 27
First chapter & notes here (on LJ), for DW just follow the tags, and Master post of whole 'verse here (also tagged on DW).
Can also be found on AO3.
Please like it... *nervous*
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: Teen. (Same warnings as the show basically.)
Characters: Spike, Angel, Illyria, Buffy, Scoobies + cameos from more or less everyone in the 'verse.
Main Ships: Spike/Buffy, Angel/Nina
Feedback: Is bloody ambrosia! (The secret ingredient is otter...)
Word count (this chapter): 2900 words
Setting and Summary: As before. (Post-NFA epic quest thing.)
Beta: The ever wonderful![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kathyh
Chapter 27
Wesley tilted his head.
“Not so happy to see us Angel? I can’t imagine why.”
“Christ,” Spike muttered, as Angel swallowed, before speaking carefully, remembering Lilah and wondering what else was waiting in the darkness that was surrounding them:
“Can you help at all?”
Gunn chuckled, except his eyes were like flint.
“I see he’s as thick-headed as ever. We’re here to stop you.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Angel replied, even as he became aware that his chest was hurting; a dull, but slowly growing ache where the Circle of the Black Thorn had burned their mark, and Wesley snorted disdainfully.
“And I didn’t want to sign a binding contract under false pretences which is keeping me around even after death — and yet, here we are. Life’s a bitch and then you don’t die.”
As he spoke a sword materialised in his hands, and Gunn was now hefting a large axe.
Knowing that although Spike would fight as best as he could, his injuries would still be putting him at a disadvantage, Angel turned to Illyria and saw that she appeared to have frozen.
Oh multiple levels of crap. He should have known that Wolfram and Hart would know what her Achilles’ heel was…
He could sense other shadows outside the small circle of light they were standing in, and had no doubt that the attacks would just keep coming — they needed a different angle, a different kind of attack — and then Spike spoke.
“Saw your old man yesterday,” he drawled, and Wesley slowly turned his head, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
“Did you now?”
“Told me — and I repeat, word for word: ‘Go take down those bloody bastards so my son can rest in peace’.”
A pause as Wesley seemed to weigh this in his mind, before turning to Gunn.
“Do you want to tell them?”
Gunn shrugged.
“Might as well.”
Looking from Spike, to Illyria, before finally settling on Angel, Gunn spoke slowly and carefully.
“Listen. Y’all seem to be under the delusion that somehow we have been roped into this against our will. That you might be able to win us over to your side by tuggin’ at our heartstrings. Now let me explain something: We volunteered. You have made such a mess of your mission, you don’t even understand how screwed up it is!”
A beat, then he continued.
“So get this, Champions. We’re here to save the world from you.”
He wasn’t lying. It was possible he’d been lied to, but he definitely believed he was telling the truth.
“What do you mean?” Angel asked (partly to prolong the conversation, he needed to work out what to do, and quickly), but as he spoke the darkness receded a little and he saw who else was there with them…
Lindsey, Lilah, Holland Manners, Gavin Park, Knox, every lawyer and employee who had died — they were all there; calm, smiling, armed, and ready to kill.
He drew his sword, and got ready to sell his life as dearly as possible. Whatever the cost. Spike had to survive so he could use the Key…
“CEASE!”
The voice was Illyria’s, but with the violence and volume of a thunderstorm behind it.
The entire scene froze, their adversaries suddenly motionless mid-attack, and Angel and Spike slowly turned, not even daring to look at each other.
It was Illyria still, but above and around her a black shape towered, ephemeral arms or legs or tentacles stretching out and for long moments they could only stare in stunned silence.
“I AM ILLYRIA, GOD KING OF THE PRIMORDIUM. I WILL NOT FIGHT MINIONS! SHOW YOURSELVES!”
At her voice the people around them shattered, a million million shards exploding out into nothingness — Angel and Spike held up their arms in an attempt at shielding their faces, but slowly lowered them upon realising that there was no hail of glass-like shards hitting them. Had they never been real? What was this place? The dull ache in Angel’s chest was now more like a quiet burning sensation, and Angel wondered if it was due to being so close to the power centre of Wolfram and Hart…
He blinked at Spike, whose face then turned slack-jawed as he looked ahead at where the crowd of Wolfram and Hart employees had been.
Some distance away stood a wolf, a ram, and a hart.
It was impossible to say whether they were very large and far away, or ‘normal’ sized animals close by. The murky darkness all around them hadn’t changed, and Angel couldn’t say where the ‘light’ came from that they were standing in. It was more like night-vision… The darkness was everywhere, but only here was there anything to see.
Turning back to Illyria the immense black shape still surrounded her, and he remembered the images they had found of her in her original form. What this development meant, he couldn’t say. Was she no longer bound by her ‘shell’? He didn’t know much about higher realms…
As it was, she raised one of her hands, a small cold smile on her face, and snapped her fingers.
In an instant an enormous beast appeared, charging past them, and it was only as Angel tried to regain his balance that he realised that it was Talnor but in what must have been its original size, its three heads stretched out towards their adversaries, and for a few seconds his heart was in his mouth as he waited for the inevitable battle — except Talnor ran through them as if they were merely mirages, and then both Talnor and their adversaries dissolved into nothing.
“PARLOUR TRICKS,” Illyria sniffed. Her voice was quieter, but still with thunder at its back.
“So, um, what does any of this mean?” Spike asked, waving a hand towards their surroundings. “Like, what’s happening? What happened to Wesley and Gunn and the rest of the tag team, what happened to you?”
“NOTHING HAPPENED TO ME. BUT THIS PLACE ALLOWS YOU TO SEE MORE OF MY TRUE FORM.”
“And Wes and Gunn?” Angel repeated, and Illyria made a dismissive flick with her hand.
“UNIMPORTANT. GONE. EVERYTHING IS DISTRACTION UPON DECEPTION. THIS IS THE PLACE, BUT OUR GOAL IS HIDDEN…”
For a moment they stood there, uncertain what to do, as Illyria closed her eyes, the darkness around her growing denser, the shape more solid.
And then — she laughed.
Angel couldn’t remember her ever laughing before, and now, here, the sensation was approximately what a stone quarry would sound like if it could express mirth, the very ground seeming to shake at the sound as a fearsome smile broke out on her face and she threw her arms out as far as she could — and as she did so the darkness rolled away, further and further, leaving them in a place not unlike the white room, seemingly stretching out to infinity.
Except on the floor below their feet was a mystical circle, unfamiliar symbols black against the pale floor.
As Angel tried to take it in, feeling the sudden swell of power all around, a searing, immediate pain erupted in his head.
Along with the pain a host of images flashed through his mind, almost too fast to follow.
Trying to recover, the echo of the pain still reverberating, he realised that there was also a profound sense of déjà vu… Trying to concentrate, disoriented, he eventually managed to pin it down — it had been during their very first step into another dimension, Wolfram and Hart’s home world… he’d been asleep, had been woken by what he thought was a dream, hit his head on a rock.
Except it hadn’t been a dream, it had been a vision.
He had not understood — or remembered — at the time, but now…
Glancing sideways he saw Spike wince as he pulled the Dead key from his pocket, and the vision began to rearrange itself, the images slowly lining up with a finality that felt like the ultimate stab in the back.
They were trapped. Caught in a catch-22, set up by Wolfram and Hart (they always had a back-up plan, always, and this failsafe was as old as civilisation); and worst of all he’d signed it himself, happily so, thinking only of the immediate battle. How had he never expected this?
Dru had seen it, of course. No wonder she had laughed.
And Lord Kustos, The Keeper of Secrets — he had to have known. “The Key — can it be brought back to life?” Angel had asked, and Kustos had smiled: “Well, that is a… complicated question. Although for you-”
And Gunn, just now, “You have made such a mess of your mission, you don’t even understand how screwed up it is!”
He knew what he had to do, and there was no time — no time at all to explain anything to Spike.
(The pain in his chest was now like holy water poured into an open wound. Impossible to ignore, and almost making him bite his cheek to stop from crying out.)
“Hurry!” Illyria urged, the strain in her voice obvious. The dark shadow that had surrounded her was gone and she looked pale in the harsh light, her voice hollow. “I cannot sustain this place for long.”
But then Angel remembered his first friend, and realised that there might be time for one last message.
***
Clutching the Dead Key, Spike surveyed the nothing-place they were standing in, wondering what the hell he should do now.
Belatedly he acknowledged that Angel might have been right — knowing how to use the bloody thing would be rather useful, just about now. He’d half expected that blood would do the trick, but his hand was still half-covered in his own blood, and nothing. Cautiously he put the toe of his boot inside the mystical circle with the oddly familiar symbols, but still nothing.
Illyria was telling him to hurry up, but to do what? Or was the Key going to self-activate like the necklace had?
Then without warning Angel appeared in front of him, with a look on his face that Spike couldn’t quantify. Despair and longing and regret and other emotions too complex to name.
“Spike-” he said; then simply reached out, his hands on Spike’s face, pulling him close, their lips meeting halfway.
Not being the type to question a good thing thrown his way, Spike simply let himself get lost in the kiss — Angel was a hell of a good kisser, but that was almost beside the point. If this was to be their final goodbye then Spike would bloody well give it his everything. It was somehow fitting, this brief moment of bliss on the edge of destruction; a taste of passion and desire and darkness and all the things they never spoke of. An echo of that one night, now many years ago. The strange tenderness that existed beneath all the fights.
When they parted Angel didn’t let go, instead studying him with an intensity that made Spike falter. It looked like… something like love.
And then Angel finally spoke, voice on the cusp of breaking but with unmistakable gravity:
“Help the helpless.”
Before Spike could begin to formulate a response to the puzzling words, Angel reached out and plucked the Dead Key from his hand.
Instantly it began to not just glow, but to emit a light so bright that Spike was blinded. He’d only seen a light like it once before, when Glory had utilised Dawn’s Key properties to get back to her own world — it was that self same dimension-searing whiter-than-white blaze, and it seemed to hit him like a mack truck.
“LEAVE!” he heard Illyria yell, her voice distorted as the whole world seemed to tilt and collapse and a crushing weight bore down on him. He saw a portal opening, and the last thing he registered was a scream of pain that could only be Angel — a scream that didn’t seem to end; and as Illyria threw him through the tear she had created he caught a retina burning glimpse of Angel enveloped in fire.
And then he was somewhere in the human world, tarmac under his palms, the smell of petrol and the sound of cars in the distance, a night’s sky above him.
Unable to comprehend what had happened he tried to get up, but the pain from his mauled arm momentarily made him black out, and darkness claimed him.
Chapter 28 on LJ
Chapter 28 on DW
Can also be found on AO3.
Please like it... *nervous*
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: Teen. (Same warnings as the show basically.)
Characters: Spike, Angel, Illyria, Buffy, Scoobies + cameos from more or less everyone in the 'verse.
Main Ships: Spike/Buffy, Angel/Nina
Feedback: Is bloody ambrosia! (The secret ingredient is otter...)
Word count (this chapter): 2900 words
Setting and Summary: As before. (Post-NFA epic quest thing.)
Beta: The ever wonderful
kathyhWesley tilted his head.
“Not so happy to see us Angel? I can’t imagine why.”
“Christ,” Spike muttered, as Angel swallowed, before speaking carefully, remembering Lilah and wondering what else was waiting in the darkness that was surrounding them:
“Can you help at all?”
Gunn chuckled, except his eyes were like flint.
“I see he’s as thick-headed as ever. We’re here to stop you.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Angel replied, even as he became aware that his chest was hurting; a dull, but slowly growing ache where the Circle of the Black Thorn had burned their mark, and Wesley snorted disdainfully.
“And I didn’t want to sign a binding contract under false pretences which is keeping me around even after death — and yet, here we are. Life’s a bitch and then you don’t die.”
As he spoke a sword materialised in his hands, and Gunn was now hefting a large axe.
Knowing that although Spike would fight as best as he could, his injuries would still be putting him at a disadvantage, Angel turned to Illyria and saw that she appeared to have frozen.
Oh multiple levels of crap. He should have known that Wolfram and Hart would know what her Achilles’ heel was…
He could sense other shadows outside the small circle of light they were standing in, and had no doubt that the attacks would just keep coming — they needed a different angle, a different kind of attack — and then Spike spoke.
“Saw your old man yesterday,” he drawled, and Wesley slowly turned his head, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
“Did you now?”
“Told me — and I repeat, word for word: ‘Go take down those bloody bastards so my son can rest in peace’.”
A pause as Wesley seemed to weigh this in his mind, before turning to Gunn.
“Do you want to tell them?”
Gunn shrugged.
“Might as well.”
Looking from Spike, to Illyria, before finally settling on Angel, Gunn spoke slowly and carefully.
“Listen. Y’all seem to be under the delusion that somehow we have been roped into this against our will. That you might be able to win us over to your side by tuggin’ at our heartstrings. Now let me explain something: We volunteered. You have made such a mess of your mission, you don’t even understand how screwed up it is!”
A beat, then he continued.
“So get this, Champions. We’re here to save the world from you.”
He wasn’t lying. It was possible he’d been lied to, but he definitely believed he was telling the truth.
“What do you mean?” Angel asked (partly to prolong the conversation, he needed to work out what to do, and quickly), but as he spoke the darkness receded a little and he saw who else was there with them…
Lindsey, Lilah, Holland Manners, Gavin Park, Knox, every lawyer and employee who had died — they were all there; calm, smiling, armed, and ready to kill.
He drew his sword, and got ready to sell his life as dearly as possible. Whatever the cost. Spike had to survive so he could use the Key…
“CEASE!”
The voice was Illyria’s, but with the violence and volume of a thunderstorm behind it.
The entire scene froze, their adversaries suddenly motionless mid-attack, and Angel and Spike slowly turned, not even daring to look at each other.
It was Illyria still, but above and around her a black shape towered, ephemeral arms or legs or tentacles stretching out and for long moments they could only stare in stunned silence.
“I AM ILLYRIA, GOD KING OF THE PRIMORDIUM. I WILL NOT FIGHT MINIONS! SHOW YOURSELVES!”
At her voice the people around them shattered, a million million shards exploding out into nothingness — Angel and Spike held up their arms in an attempt at shielding their faces, but slowly lowered them upon realising that there was no hail of glass-like shards hitting them. Had they never been real? What was this place? The dull ache in Angel’s chest was now more like a quiet burning sensation, and Angel wondered if it was due to being so close to the power centre of Wolfram and Hart…
He blinked at Spike, whose face then turned slack-jawed as he looked ahead at where the crowd of Wolfram and Hart employees had been.
Some distance away stood a wolf, a ram, and a hart.
It was impossible to say whether they were very large and far away, or ‘normal’ sized animals close by. The murky darkness all around them hadn’t changed, and Angel couldn’t say where the ‘light’ came from that they were standing in. It was more like night-vision… The darkness was everywhere, but only here was there anything to see.
Turning back to Illyria the immense black shape still surrounded her, and he remembered the images they had found of her in her original form. What this development meant, he couldn’t say. Was she no longer bound by her ‘shell’? He didn’t know much about higher realms…
As it was, she raised one of her hands, a small cold smile on her face, and snapped her fingers.
In an instant an enormous beast appeared, charging past them, and it was only as Angel tried to regain his balance that he realised that it was Talnor but in what must have been its original size, its three heads stretched out towards their adversaries, and for a few seconds his heart was in his mouth as he waited for the inevitable battle — except Talnor ran through them as if they were merely mirages, and then both Talnor and their adversaries dissolved into nothing.
“PARLOUR TRICKS,” Illyria sniffed. Her voice was quieter, but still with thunder at its back.
“So, um, what does any of this mean?” Spike asked, waving a hand towards their surroundings. “Like, what’s happening? What happened to Wesley and Gunn and the rest of the tag team, what happened to you?”
“NOTHING HAPPENED TO ME. BUT THIS PLACE ALLOWS YOU TO SEE MORE OF MY TRUE FORM.”
“And Wes and Gunn?” Angel repeated, and Illyria made a dismissive flick with her hand.
“UNIMPORTANT. GONE. EVERYTHING IS DISTRACTION UPON DECEPTION. THIS IS THE PLACE, BUT OUR GOAL IS HIDDEN…”
For a moment they stood there, uncertain what to do, as Illyria closed her eyes, the darkness around her growing denser, the shape more solid.
And then — she laughed.
Angel couldn’t remember her ever laughing before, and now, here, the sensation was approximately what a stone quarry would sound like if it could express mirth, the very ground seeming to shake at the sound as a fearsome smile broke out on her face and she threw her arms out as far as she could — and as she did so the darkness rolled away, further and further, leaving them in a place not unlike the white room, seemingly stretching out to infinity.
Except on the floor below their feet was a mystical circle, unfamiliar symbols black against the pale floor.
As Angel tried to take it in, feeling the sudden swell of power all around, a searing, immediate pain erupted in his head.
Along with the pain a host of images flashed through his mind, almost too fast to follow.
Trying to recover, the echo of the pain still reverberating, he realised that there was also a profound sense of déjà vu… Trying to concentrate, disoriented, he eventually managed to pin it down — it had been during their very first step into another dimension, Wolfram and Hart’s home world… he’d been asleep, had been woken by what he thought was a dream, hit his head on a rock.
Except it hadn’t been a dream, it had been a vision.
He had not understood — or remembered — at the time, but now…
Glancing sideways he saw Spike wince as he pulled the Dead key from his pocket, and the vision began to rearrange itself, the images slowly lining up with a finality that felt like the ultimate stab in the back.
They were trapped. Caught in a catch-22, set up by Wolfram and Hart (they always had a back-up plan, always, and this failsafe was as old as civilisation); and worst of all he’d signed it himself, happily so, thinking only of the immediate battle. How had he never expected this?
Dru had seen it, of course. No wonder she had laughed.
And Lord Kustos, The Keeper of Secrets — he had to have known. “The Key — can it be brought back to life?” Angel had asked, and Kustos had smiled: “Well, that is a… complicated question. Although for you-”
And Gunn, just now, “You have made such a mess of your mission, you don’t even understand how screwed up it is!”
He knew what he had to do, and there was no time — no time at all to explain anything to Spike.
(The pain in his chest was now like holy water poured into an open wound. Impossible to ignore, and almost making him bite his cheek to stop from crying out.)
“Hurry!” Illyria urged, the strain in her voice obvious. The dark shadow that had surrounded her was gone and she looked pale in the harsh light, her voice hollow. “I cannot sustain this place for long.”
But then Angel remembered his first friend, and realised that there might be time for one last message.
Clutching the Dead Key, Spike surveyed the nothing-place they were standing in, wondering what the hell he should do now.
Belatedly he acknowledged that Angel might have been right — knowing how to use the bloody thing would be rather useful, just about now. He’d half expected that blood would do the trick, but his hand was still half-covered in his own blood, and nothing. Cautiously he put the toe of his boot inside the mystical circle with the oddly familiar symbols, but still nothing.
Illyria was telling him to hurry up, but to do what? Or was the Key going to self-activate like the necklace had?
Then without warning Angel appeared in front of him, with a look on his face that Spike couldn’t quantify. Despair and longing and regret and other emotions too complex to name.
“Spike-” he said; then simply reached out, his hands on Spike’s face, pulling him close, their lips meeting halfway.
Not being the type to question a good thing thrown his way, Spike simply let himself get lost in the kiss — Angel was a hell of a good kisser, but that was almost beside the point. If this was to be their final goodbye then Spike would bloody well give it his everything. It was somehow fitting, this brief moment of bliss on the edge of destruction; a taste of passion and desire and darkness and all the things they never spoke of. An echo of that one night, now many years ago. The strange tenderness that existed beneath all the fights.
When they parted Angel didn’t let go, instead studying him with an intensity that made Spike falter. It looked like… something like love.
And then Angel finally spoke, voice on the cusp of breaking but with unmistakable gravity:
“Help the helpless.”
Before Spike could begin to formulate a response to the puzzling words, Angel reached out and plucked the Dead Key from his hand.
Instantly it began to not just glow, but to emit a light so bright that Spike was blinded. He’d only seen a light like it once before, when Glory had utilised Dawn’s Key properties to get back to her own world — it was that self same dimension-searing whiter-than-white blaze, and it seemed to hit him like a mack truck.
“LEAVE!” he heard Illyria yell, her voice distorted as the whole world seemed to tilt and collapse and a crushing weight bore down on him. He saw a portal opening, and the last thing he registered was a scream of pain that could only be Angel — a scream that didn’t seem to end; and as Illyria threw him through the tear she had created he caught a retina burning glimpse of Angel enveloped in fire.
And then he was somewhere in the human world, tarmac under his palms, the smell of petrol and the sound of cars in the distance, a night’s sky above him.
Unable to comprehend what had happened he tried to get up, but the pain from his mauled arm momentarily made him black out, and darkness claimed him.
Chapter 28 on LJ
Chapter 28 on DW