I Will Remember You: The Final Piece
by faith_slayer89
A/N: Forgive me for the atrocities I call fight scenes. I can't write a good one to save my life.
Ch. 9: The Final Piece
Angelus cried out in pain, having been too preoccupied to dodge the arrow that came shooting at him. It caught him in his side, and as he moved to pull it out, a hand gripped Charisma tightly and pulled her out of Angelus' grasp.
"What the Hell do you think you're doing?" Buffy asked, looked positively livid. Her blue eyes flashed dangerously and she maintain the strong grip on the angel's wrist. Charisma inhaled sharply, but stood her ground, and stared back at Buffy with defiance.
"None of your damn business, so leave me alone." She wrenched her hand out of the Slayer's grasp and glared.
"You were making out with my boyfriend's evil alter-ego!" Buffy replied in outrage. "You better believe it's my business!"
"I do what I want. I do what I feel like. If I feel like bungee-jumping down the Grand Canyon, I'm gonna bungee-jump down the Grand Canyon. If I feel like kissing Angelus, then I'm gonna kiss Angelus," came the determined response, followed by a loud yelp as one of Angel's arrows whistled past her. She felt the slight tingle of the arrowhead just narrowly missing her forehead and winced involuntarily. "Hey, watch it!"
Angel ignored Charisma's call. He focused on one thing and one thing only, and that was his need to kill every inch of the demon before him. Angelus, too, focused only on his opponent. For decades, Angel had imprisoned him inside his own body, that miserable soul his downfall. When Angel had sacrificed himself, finally Angelus was free. Finally, he'd regained his body. For nearly three centuries he'd waited for this fight. From the fire in Angel's eyes, Angelus could tell that he wouldn't be disappointed.
But through the heated arguing of Charisma and Buffy, amidst the punches and kicks of Angelus and Angel, the ground began to quiver ominously. At first, it was just a slight tremor, barely felt by any of them. Within seconds, however, they could barely stand up. The earth quaked violently, and Buffy had to grab onto a tree to keep her balance. Not to be outdone, the already-darkened sky began to cloud over. Thunder rumbled threateningly, and in one explosive move, lightning cracked across the sky. Rain began to fall as hard as stones and dangerous winds began to whip violently at them. All the fighting ceased.
Charisma looked up above and Angelus looked down below. "Oh, that's never good," they said in unison. Angel's fourth arrow passed through hazy black smoke, while Buffy grabbed at foggy white mist in vain, as the two heeded the ethereal calls from beyond and shimmered away.
"Somebody wanna tell me what just happened here?" Buffy yelled, struggling to be heard over the fierce winds.
"I think somebody's gonna get a time-out," Angel quipped, making his way over to Buffy. "Come on," he shouted, pulling her close to him, "let's get back to the tents, if they haven't blown away."
"No no no no no," Charisma replied defiantly, crossing her arms. "You can't do this to me!" Her thick hair was matted down, and in her rain-soaked clothes she resembled not the alluring angel she was so much as a shipwreck victim.
"On the contrary," Giles replied, trying to keep his voice even.
"We're the Powers-That-Be, honey," Cordelia reminded her. "We can pretty much do whatever we like." The blinding white of the Higher Plain was almost too much for the Senior Partners as they looked on. The Mirror made for an adequate glimpse into the Higher Plain, though vision was often obscured by the stupid clouds they had floating through the place. The Partners doubted whether the idiots from up above had even thought of using their stupid well to see into the Realm of Darkness.
"No," Charisma said again, sounding more afraid. They stood in a line facing her, and she threw a desperate glance at each of them, hoping for some sort of reprieve. "Faith?" She asked weakly.
"Sorry, kiddo," the Rogue Slayer replied, shrugging indifferently. "It was your choice, not mine."
"No!" Charisma screamed, before fading away. Her cries echoed horribly, and each of the Powers looked uncomfortable. The Mirror blacked out, and the attention of the Senior Partners was now placed solely on Angelus.
"Congratulations," came a deep, throaty voice. One of the shadows nodded slightly. "After two-and-a-hlaf centuries, you've finally succeeded in making the Powers' right-hand angel lose her wings."
"Well," Angelus drawled arrogantly, "I don't like to brag or anything-"
"It took you long enough!" The second shadowy figure to acknowledge him had a high-pitched voice that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. "This victory is nothing to gloat about, Angelus! She has triumphed over you time and again! You have beaten her only once!"
"However," a third figure replied, its voice a mere rustling whisper, like the sound of dead leaves, "once is often enough."
"Your reward," the fourth Partner continued briskly, "is this: No longer are you bound to this realm to exist. You may roam the dimensions as you please, go wherever you wish."
"Know only this, Angelus: Tread carefully. The girl will be looking for you, and she will be angered."
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," the first voice smirked.
"My eternal gratitude," Angelus replied humbly.
"Be gone," the second voice replied lazily, and then he was.
"You think we've done the right thing?" Willow asked, looking around at her friends.
"If an almighty power of the universe has insecurity issues, God help the people of Earth," Xander muttered.
"This is no time for jokes, Harris," Doyle interjected, looking quite serious. "We may have screwed over the entire universe with this plan."
"She's a smart girl," Gunn assured the rest. "She can handle herself."
"Hope you're right, Charley-boy," Spike sighed, as they began to group around the Well.
Angelus looked up at the sound of the crash to see Charisma in the doorway. No longer decked out in the angelic whites of a Higher Being, she wore plain blue jeans and a jean jacket over a black tank top. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail and her trademark shades were gone. She held a sword in her right hand and it was apparent that she'd just kicked down the door. The blonde underneath him looked from the glaring brunette to the sword in her hand to the door lying two feet away from her.
"Get gone," Charisma rasped. The blonde fumbled clumsily with the buttons on her blouse, but then gave up and tumbled out of the elegant bed. Glancing fearfully at Charisma, she ran out of the room like it was on fire.
"I was busy here," Angelus drawled, his eyebrows arched. His feigned indignance pissed her off, becase it was clear that he was amused by the whole thing.
"You took my afterlife from me," she said, her voice deathly quiet. "Let's see if I can't even the odds a little, hmm?"
"You really think you can take me in a fight?" Angelus asked, standing up. His shirt was unbuttoned, and seeing that she was looking, he grinned.
"I really think I can," she replied, and lunged with the sword. Angelus dodged it and kicked out at her wrist, forcing her to drop the blade. He kicked it away and they moved into hand-to-hand combat. Despite her lack in ethereal abilities, they were fairly even-matched, and Charisma even seemed to be getting the upper hand of the fight. She knocked Angelus down and pulled a long dagger out from in her jacket. She stood over him and prepared to bring the blade down when he moved his legs apart, knocking her off balance and causing her to fall.
In one move, she landed on him and he rolled over, so that she was beneath him. She tried to stab him anyway, but he pinned her wrist to the floor.
"Get off," Charisma ordered him, and tried in vain to move.
"Is that what you really want?" Angelus asked, murmuring into her ear. "That's what I thought," he grinnined satisfactorily after a moment of hesitant silence. He moved his mouth over hers and began to kiss her deeply. She wasn't fully aware when he pulled her up, nor was she fully aware when he had her up against the wall. She was aware, however, of him pulling off her jacket, and she ran her fingers across his bare chest in response.
He pulled her left leg up to his waist and held it there, moving harder onto her. He ran his hand up her leg and under her shirt, and soon that was off, too. With an arm wrapped around his neck, she pulled off his shirt, and revelled in the sensation of his lips on her skin. His mouth travelled farther down to her chest, and she felt his fingers unbuckle her pants and heard the clink of her belt hitting the ground. Panic began to overtake her, and she hoped that she'd led him on far enough.
As his fingers moved around her back to unclasp her bra, she kicked him where it hurt and he let go of her, dropping to his knees in pain. With another kick that would have snapped the neck of a mere mortal, he was out cold.
"Jerk," she scowled, pulling on her tank top and jacket and re-buckling her pants. She replaced the dagger in her jacket and found the sword and pushed it through her belt loop, wanting it on her just in case Angelus regained consciousness before she'd gone. Giving him one last contemptuous glance, she began her search. "Now, if I were a something that could change a pre-dated prophecy, where would I be?"
She made a beeline for the bedroom and searched through all Angelus' drawers, but found only clothes and the occasional porn magazine. She ransacked his room within fifteen minutes but had found nothing of seeming importance. She made her way to the kitchen and tore that apart, too, but also found nothing that seemed to have anything to do with the final battle. Making her way back to the living room, she noticed Angelus stirring and gave him another sharp kick to the head, which promptly knocked him out again.
"Him waking up is the last thing I need," she muttered, stressed. She'd been at the search for hours, but had found nothing. Tired and bored out of her mind, she draped herself languidly over the couch. "Wonder if he's got cable?" Charisma mused, flicking on the TV. Instantly, Angelus' face appeared in black and white. "Oh, this oughta be good." But though the face looked like Angelus, she saw that his eyes were full of torture and remorse, unlike his counterpart's, which were full of nothing but violence and lust.
"Angel," she murmured quietly. It looked as though she were watching a videotape. The angle of the camera suggested that it was on the ceiling in a corner, looking down, and she could see the back of a boy's head. Fairly proficient in her Angel history, she realized that the boy must have been Connor, and by the weakened, battered look of Angel, realized with a start when this had all taken place. "Wolfram and Hart musta left a few cameras behind."
"We're champions," came Angel's voice, and his expression was one of fierce determination. "We live as though the world were as it should be to show it what it can be." A light bulb went off inside her head, and she began to repeat the words over and over until she'd memorized them. "You're my son and I love you," Angel continued. "Now get out." The tape ended, and Charisma jumped up.
"Mission accomplished," she sang out gleefully.
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