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 Eleven
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When all is lost and the darkness reigns, then shall the Lords of Hell rise. They shall see all Light and shall extinguish it. They shall reign supreme over the world. No human shall be able to face them, no one but the joining of the living and the un-living, the Dark and Light.
—Book of Demons by Augustus Cratorius, 593
Angel
I killed two right away—one with a knife thrown into it’s jewel and the other a moment later, with a stake. "Destroy the jewels in their forehead," I told Doyle, feeling my face morph as I blocked a blow.
He didn’t reply. Not exactly the time for easy banter. His face changed too, and he immediately gained strength, sending a demon sprawling back with a punch. I decided he could take care of myself and focused on the ones attacking me. I flipped one to the ground and kicked another. A third hit my head from behind and I growled, hunching over and twisting to hit it in the gut. Whatever kind of gut these things had. My knife was on the ground, a few feet away. I threw off one demon and dived for it, barely getting it in my hand when another leapt on me. I turned and pushed it off with both legs, then flipped myself up, ramming the knife into a demon’s jewel. I spun as it begun to disintegrate and ducked a blow. A second one caught me as I was low, propelling me backward. One leaped on me as the other grabbed my legs and I yelled, my hand nearly cuaght beneath it’s weight.
"The End is here," the thing growled.
"You mentioned that already," I replied, and pullled my arm free, hitting it’s jewels. It looked surprised and I pushed it off. Doyle grabbed the demon holding my legs and I jumped to my feet, immediately assaulted by three more. Beyond the demons I could see the street, in chaos now, as demons appeared out of nowhere, destroying houses, setting things to flames, killing innocent people. The explosion earlier has destroyed an entire block nearby, and the fire was rapdily spreading. Smoke filled the already dark air, and ashes.
The ground began to shake.
The End of Days indeed.
"Angel!" a strangled cry sounded. I punched the nearest demon and turned, watching in horror as Doyle fell to the ground, a hole torn open in his stomach, his guts spilling out, onto the street. "Get to Buffy," he managed. "Needs you."
And then he died. In one moment the best man I have known in centuries died. I watched him die.
I will never forgive myself for that.
There was no time to mourn. I spun and knocked two heads together, destroying both jewels at the same time. A shoved my knife into another, and glanced back at the bodies of my friends.
It would do no good to try and take them. Once this was over, if I lived, I would give them a memorial.
Now, I had to try and live.
Buffy, Doyle had said. Buffy needed me. If L.A. was in chaos, what was it like on the Hellmouth? There was obviously nothing I could do here. I could die trying to fight the demons, or I could die trying to get somewhere where there might be something I could do. All the prophecies said we must work together to triumph.
She had to be alive. She had to. Or life itself would be worth nothing.
The city burned. I began to run.
Faith
After I killed the demon I thought about going back to find B, but I figured she could take care of herself. Besides, I don’t like sharing.
I decided to go towards the old library, the Hellmouth, see what was happening there. I mean, this was all coming out of Hell, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t the Hellmouth be the most happening place at the moment? Plus Giles’ house was on the way, and I figured if anyone knew what was going on, it would be him. Coolest Watcher I ever met. Knows how to lie too.
I was running through the streets, killing demons as I went, when I ran into—what’s her name?—Anya. "Faith!" she yelled, and I stopped and turned.
"What? I’m kind of busy." She rolled her eyes.
"Giles says we have to meet up. Xander and Willow went looking for you and Buffy."
"Yeah, well B and I split up a little ways back. Spike was with her," I explained, looking around for something to hurt. The blood was pumping through my veins like I was high or something. High on the fight, I guess. It’s…exhilarating. That kind of power. It makes me feel alive.
The killing, I’ve decided, isn’t great. And beating up on people who can’t fight—well, that’s plain boring. No, it’s the demons that do it for me. They can give you a run for your money.
"Well come on, we have to go meet with Giles. He’s at the old high school wreckage. Said we all had to be on the Hellmouth or something," the former demon explained. I shrugged.
"Sounds good to me. Just let me kill this, and I’ll be right with you," I said, gesturing to an approaching vampire. I swung around and kicked him sending him flying back in the air, and threw a stake at his back when he tried to run away. He exploded into dust and I turned back to Anya. "Let’s go."
We ran. Seemed to be doing a lot of that. I paused to kill a few demons on the way and ran faster. Anya lagged behind a little bit. Hate when they can’t keep up. Nice thing about B—she can. Usually.
"Hurry up!" I yelled after decapitating some big hunking thing with it’s own sword.
"I’m trying1" she yelled back, speeding up a little. All of a sudden, some demon appeared right in front of her, and before I could react (or she could for that matter) she was on the ground, partially decapitated herself. I killed the bastard and spent a moment staring down at the girl. Xander liked her a lot. Silly boy. Sweet though.
Damn. I hate when that happens.
I turned away and started running again, trying to find Giles. Giles would know how to stop it.
Which was when the Hellmouth exploded.
It wasn’t like exploding exactly. I mean, it was, but there was more to it—stuff came out. Like, worse than the stuff before. Way worse. I swear, this thing was three hundred feet tall and wicked-ugly!
And it looked straight out me. How the Hell did that work?
How the Hell. Right.
I turned and ran. The other way.
"Fuck!" I yelled. "Fuck fuck fuck!" Giles was dead, if he’d still been on the Hellmouth, which was pretty likely. Anya was dead. Some giganto thing that was probably a Lord of Hell was looking my direction…where was Buffy? And Spike? And anyone else who could fight the damn thing?
Not that I didn’t want to fight it. I just didn’t really want to die.
The streets were worse than when I’d come through the first time. Half the houses had collapsed, and the other half were on fire. People were everywhere, screaming, milling around, being eaten by demons. Demons were even more ubiquitous.
Now where’d I learn a word like that?
I heard a familiar sounding shriek and turned down a side street, running till I reached the rubble of a building. It was Buffy. She was almost over the rubble, and Spike was beside her. He pointed up and I looked. Far above us, about ten demons were throwing bodies back and forth. Bodies that looked a little too familiar.
No wonder she was upset.
"I’m going to kill them," Buffy said through grated teeth, her eyes pale sparks, sharp as swords.
"Yeah, good for you," I snapped. "Can we get on that now? Cause Giles was on the Hellmouth, with just exploded, and look, there’s a big monster coming to get us!" I gestured towards the thing and Spike burst into a string of expletives.
"You said you were going to bloody stop the shaggin’ thing!" he yelled.
"You want to die?!" Buffy screamed back. "Cause you’re really close!"
"Shut the Hell up!" I yelled. "We have to fight it. Buffy, you distract it. I’ll kill it."
"You don’t get it," Spike snarled. "You can’t kill a bloody Lord of Hell!" B looked a little pale.
"Well fuck that," I said. "If we can’t kill the big one, we should at least kill some small ones. Better than standing around here."
"Then let’s do it," Buffy said, looking pale.
And we did.
Spike was the first to fall. A vampire shoved his own stake into him. We kept fighting, and they kept coming, out of nowhere. Thousands of them. When we started fighting, the streets were full of people. By the end, it was just us. And a whole Hell of a lot of demons.
I was living, really living. I could feel the energy, the blood in me, the feeling of ultimate freedom, ultimate pain. I was fighting.
They finally got me. I don’t know about Buffy. Something pierced my lung, I could feel it, and as I started to fall, I saw her face. Her eyes were so sad, which surprised me. Why should she care about me?
Did I care about her? Who knows. It was a little late to try and find out.
"It was fun," I murmured, and as they covered me and I couldn’t even see the darkness of the sky anymore, fear set in. I thought about the park, and my mother braiding my hair, and wondered if that’s what it would be like when I died. "I woke up for this?" I asked aloud, and then the end came.
Buffy
I hid. After Faith died I ran, and ran and ran, and everywhere I went the people were gone, were dead. The entire town was demolished. The population of it was gone.
I think I was the last living person in the city.
I crawled under a demolished building finally, and I hid. I know it was the cowardly thing to do. I know I was weak and afraid. But what good would it do to die? And die I would. Nothing could stand against that many. Nothing.
And above them all, the Lord of Hell watched us.
Time meant nothing. I didn’t think, I didn’t feel. I curled into a ball and didn’t sleep, but I wasn’t awake. A haze took over, this odd dreamlike feeling where all I could see was them slipping away from me one by one, where I was screaming, standing beneath that black sky and screaming all the horror of that day.
My life was gone. Maybe I still lived, though I wasn’t completely convinced about that one, but my life was over.
They were all gone. All of them.
Well, maybe not all.
I think that was the only thing that kept me alive for however long I huddled there, beneath wood and brick, with terrible cries coming from the outer world, with the sound of flames, with the earthquake that shook the ground. And then, later, with the silence, that terrible, terrible silence of a world lost. The only thing I could hold on to.
He might still be alive. He might. And maybe it was only Sunnydale. Maybe it was only the Hellmouth. Maybe I would walk out of the town and things would be all right. I wouldn’t have them back, but I would have the world, and he would be alive.
I didn’t exactly think all of this. I couldn’t think. My mind just wasn’t functioning like that. I couldn’t process anything, or believe that it was real, or that it was a dream.
I closed my eyes and listened to terror.
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