Disclaimer: No, I'm not this evil...evil, but not this evil. Joss owns 'em.
Author's Notes: Okay, this is therapy fic for IWRY, also involving prophecies, apocalypses and whatever odd things pop into my head...but mostly B/A-ness. The parts are all gonna be first person from different people's points of views. Bad things will happen. This is gonna be very angsty, but I promise, it will all work out in the end!
Teaser: The End of Days is coming to Sunnydale...
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Part Eight
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In the last days, the signs shall appear. A baby shall be born with eyes turned inwards. Visions shall come of what is most feared. The Sleeper shall Awaken and the day shall turn to Darkness.
—Books of Gregorios, 879
Angel
It was worse than I thought.
Cordelia’s good at exaggerating things, so I figured they weren’t really holed up in my apartment refusing to speak. Of course, sometimes she just tells the truth.
"They’ve been down there for two days?" I asked.
"Uh…yeah!" Cordelia exclaimed. "What did I say?"
"I heard you. All he said was that he couldn’t believe it?" I asked, wondering if Doyle would talk to me. I’d walked in to my living room and stopped. Neither of them had looked up. Doyle had been sitting on my couch with a shot glass in his hand. John was asleep opposite him. I’d gone back upstairs.
"He looked pretty stricken. And he stared at me for like five minutes! Just stared. It was kind of freaksome. Then he went straight for the whiskey. I should have known!"
"Right. I’m going to go talk to him," I said.
"Ya think?" I gave her a look and went down the stairs.
"Doyle?" I said softly, approaching the couch. He downed his glass and poured himself another, then looked up at me, squinting.
"Angel?"
"I’m back. I got kind of sidetracked," I apologized. "Can I sit down?" Doyle stared the seat beside him for a few minutes, then finally nodded.
"Go right ahead," he said, his voice slurred. I sat.
"Would you like to tell me about your vision?" I asked. Doyle downed the contents of the current glass and poured himself another.
"Not really."
"You want to tell me why you’ve been down here for the past two days drinking?" I asked, taking the glass out of his hand and setting it down on the other side of the table. He stared at his hands for a moment.
"I saw her."
"Who?" I asked gently.
"Cordelia."
"What about her?"
"She was dead," he whispered. I stilled, wondering what life would be like without Cordelia’s odd commentary and frank statements.
"We can stop it," I promised him, knowing that whatever I felt at the thought was multiplied many times for Doyle, who cared about her more than either would admit, and furthermore had seen the vision. It’s never the same second hand.
"We can’t," he choked, his voice ragged. "I’ve been thinkin’ about it…but they’ve all come true. Every single one. They’re just warnings, so you can stop what comes next, but this one…God Angel, she’s goin’ t’ die."
"No she’s not," I said firmly. "I won’t let her. We won’t let her. Butyou’re certainly not helping her down her drinking yourself into a stupor. Look at yourself. We have work to do. And I need you. Cordelia needs you."
"Right," he laughed bitterly. "Cordelia wouldn’t need me if I was the last man on earth."
"You’re a liar," I told him. "Come on, time for a cold shower, and then a nice long nap. You’ll feel better in the morning."
"Sure, after hours of dreaming about her dead?" he snorted. "I don’t think so!"
I tried to imagine having a vision of Buffy dead, but it was too painful to think of. Too painful to even imagine. I’d had so many nightmares of it, been shown it so many times as I suffered in Hell, but to truly believe it would come and there was nothing I could do about it—I couldn’t even imagine.
"Come on," I said softly. "We have things to do."
Buffy
I broke Riley’s nose. Oops.
That was pretty much the only thing I learned at school that week. The rest of the time I was trying to slow the extreme influx of demons into town, cramming for the finals I was pretty sure I was going to fail, and trying to convince my mother to cancel Christmas this year. I mean, I love Christmas, but I thought of all the places one could be when the Apocalypse came, Sunnydale probably wasn’t the best. It took some doing, but I convinced her to visit my aunt. They’ll fight the whole two weeks, but hopefully not die.
The really terrible part was we didn’t know when. It could come any time. It could come that very second and we would be completely unprepared. Well, as unprepared as you can get when you’ve been gathering all the weapons in the county together. I had this odd feeling that thirty crossbows weren’t going to do much good when it came to fighting these "Lords of Hell".
The whole Spike thing worked out. He was so excited at being able to bully other vampires that he was even willing to kill a few now and then. Thank god vamps all hate each other.
Anyway, I was at Giles’ house, torn between my French notes and discussing possible attacks with Giles. He thought the Hellmouth would most likely open, and we should be there to combat it. Xander was firmly convinced that something was just going to come out of the sky and destroy us all in one big blast.
"You know, you were wrong about graduation," Willow informed him.
"Maybe I was sensing my death now," he said darkly. Willow and Oz were curled up on the couch. At least one happy thing was happening.
"Xander, could we please move on?" Giles asked. "With the…the Lords of Hell we can’t precisely know what to expect, but we must assume that it will have something to do with the Hellmouth."
"So now we don’t even know what to expect?" I demanded. Giles opened his mouth to reply, but I shook my head. "No, don’t even say a word, unless it’s a cheerful or excited word. Or a French conversation."
"Hey, guys, look at this!" Anya exclaimed from her seat near the window.
"What?" Xander asked, going to sit beside her. "Woah." I did my best to ignore them.
"Oh my," Giles breathed, having gone to stand beside them. "It appears you were correct Oz."
What were they looking at? I focused on subjunctif verb conjugations.
"Buffy, you might want to come look at this," Willow suggested. I sighed and put my book down, walking over with my arms crossed.
"What?" I demanded, nothing immediately obvious in the view.
"There," Xander said, pointing. I followed his finger to the horizon. And stopped. Because all along the edge of the sky, where there should have been more sky…there wasn’t. It was just…gone. Black. Complete and utter darkness.
"Ouch," I heard myself say quietly.
"You can say that again," Xander agreed.
"Um, Giles, could we get on that research now?" I asked hopefully, eyeing the thing.
"Y-yes, of course," he stammered, not quite able to pull his eyes away from the slightly-pulsing dark line of sky.
The phone rang. And rang again.
"Someone want to get that?" Xander asked. Anya gave him an annoyed look and went for the phone. The rest of us kept looking out the window.
"Buffy?" she said a moment later. I turned, wondering who had called. Anya looked confused, and possible a little worried. "It’s the hospital."
Faith
It was nice there. Maybe a little boring, a little cliched, but nice. It looked exactly like the park I used to go to when I was little, before my mom got into alcohol. I know it wasn’t, because they bulldozed the place to put up apartments later, but it looked the same. My mom was even there sometimes. She would braid my hair and we would lie on the blanket together, staring up at the sky. Or whatever that was.
Okay, I admit, having this pearly luminescent stuff instead of a sky and sun kind of threw me at first. But you get used to stuff like that.
I thought maybe it was Heaven. I mean, I remember dying. Or, almost dying anyway. I remember being so amazed that B had actually done it…and sad too. Not because I was dying, but because she’d given up that innocence of hers and actually done it.
Which, when I think about it, is really screwed up.
The weird thing was, I would hear her. Not all the time, but every now and then she would come and sit in the playground with me, or ride the merry-go-round, laughing and collapse next to me in the sand. Mostly she just talked. She’d tell me all this stuff, about how much she missed Angel, how many vampires she’d killed the night before, what it was like in college. She’d give me all the juicy details of her latest fights, or tell me what it felt like to be dumped by that sleazeball—what was his name? Parker. I told her to beat his ass, but she never seems to hear me.
Sometimes it makes me mad when she comes. Like how come she gets to be out there doing all this stuff and I’m stuck here—wherever I am? And who gave her the right to be nice to me? And why should I want that anyway?
Sometimes it makes me sad.
Oh God, does that sound pathetic. What am I? A freaking loser? It would be nice to get out and live a little though, y’ know? Stuck here with no one to talk to, or fight…it gets kind of lonely. Not that I need anyone else, but…
Sometimes I like to see her. She doesn’t seem to hate me anymore, though since this entire thing is obviously in my head, this whole "sisterhood" thing must be my subconscious playing some kind of crappy joke on me. It used to be fun hanging out with B though. She understood was it was like to be the only one. Even if she was a goody two shoes.
Then all of a sudden one day, it all went weird. The sky turned black and the park was gone—it was this weird barren landscape. Freaky cool. And I hear this voice, telling me that my time’s up. What’s that supposed to mean? Wasn’t I already dead?
But suddenly I started thinking, maybe I wasn’t. And maybe I didn’t want to be. Maybe I could live some more. I know Wilkins is gone, B told me all about it. For a while I thought maybe there wasn’t a reason to live. Maybe it was better she’d killed me, cause Hell, no one else cared, right?
And then standing out in the middle of this weird place, with smoke and fire everywhere, and this black sky, I thought, Maybe I could live some more. Maybe there’s things left to do.
And the voice goes silent.
And I’m not there anymore.
The first thing I heard was this beeping, and it was speeding up. There was something on my mouth, and I reached up to pull it off and realized I hurt all over. God, I couldn’t be dead. It wouldn’t hurt that much. I gulped in air—stale, hospital air, I thought—and opened my eyes.
Sure enough I was in the hospital. A sign outside the door said ICQ. I was hooked up to all these monitors. The beeping was my heart. Across the room was another bed, with some old guy hooked up to all the same things I was. "Doctor!" I heard outside and people started to rush in, demanding if I was all right and how I felt.
I smiled and whispered, "Hello world."
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