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 Fifteen
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For ten time ten time ten years the Darkness will seep. And at the end the world shall erupt into Fire. The End of Days shall come upon the Earth, and when that is done, who can say?
But the Balance will be restored. The Light will return. And all the world will dance in the sunlight.
—Prophecies of Eusebios, 167 A.D.
Angel
It was sunny. Warmth spread over us like a blanket and Buffy nuzzled deeper into my arms. If this was Heaven, I wanted to stay. Not that I really deserved to be there, but maybe they got me mixed up for someone else. At the moment, I didn’t really care. I was in bed with the woman I loved, in the sunshine.
Except the bed was hard.
And why would there be a bed outside anyway?
Reluctantly I opened my eyes. And sat up. And started to wonder why I wasn’t dust.
"Bloody friggin’ Hell!" Spike yelled. I looked over to see my childe beginning to catch on fire, running for cover.
Cover. Which seemed to be amazingly available in a place I distinctly remember the buildings being leveled.
"Angel?" Buffy murmured sleepily. "Are we dead?"
"This is an odd idea of Heaven if we are. I never thought Spike would be here," I replied. She sat up, running a hand through her hair.
"The Hellmouth is closed," she remarked, "And the skies back." She looked over at me, and then up at the sky. "Something seems off here."
Around us the others were waking up. We were lying on the concrete of the foundation for the new high school library. As I recall hearing, Giles had lobbied to have it moved, but no such luck. Spike was hiding under a few beams, swearing.
I took a deep breath. "I’m alive," I said softly. Buffy seemed torn between a smile and a demand to know what was going on.
"I’m with you on the whole Spike-in-Heaven thing," she replied. "But I’m having trouble with the Sunnydale-is-back part too. Didn’t we just die?"
"Uh, I for one—yes!" Xander exclaimed, sitting up behind us.
"I’d be wigging out if I weren’t so tired," Willow yawned. She did a double take when she saw Angel. "Um…why aren’t you dead?"
"I think that’s the question we all need to ask," Doyle said. "What happened?"
"I stabbed that guy," Buffy replied. "And he vanished and then…poof, whiteness…and then here."
"So are we dead, or did we save the world?" Cordelia asked.
"And if we are dead, why isn’t Heaven full of fluffy white clouds?" Xander asked.
"Let’s assume we’re all…all alive," Giles said, putting on his glasses, then glanced over at the blond vampire. "Except Spike of course." Spike growled, and cursed again as his foot started to smoke. Buffy smiled vaguely.
"Can I go back to sleep now?" she asked. "I mean, I’d love to freak out over the fact that somehow we’re all still alive and Sunnydale’s back, as is the sky, and look, Angel in the sunlight but," she yawned, "can we get some sleep first? I’m back in fire bad tree pretty mode."
"Good idea," I said. It all seemed a little surreal. Looking back on it I can’t believe we just sat there, as if nothing had happened. Shock, I suppose. It didn’t last long.
"Sleep then," Giles suggested, struggling to his feet.
"You can come over to my place," Buffy said to me, including Cordelia and Doyle. "Plenty of extra room for all."
I was human. I was alive or…or not. We didn’t really know. We didn’t really care at the moment. We mostly wanted to sleep. I took Buffy’s hand and we walked back to her house, marveling at the warmth of the sunlight and the simple beauty of life.
Buffy
The phone woke me up. I moaned and rolled over, reaching for it, before I realized Angel was in the way. My eyes widened and his opened. I blushed and reached for the phone, sitting up.
What can I say? There wasn’t enough room after all.
"Hello?" I said, grateful to find my voice in semi-working order.
"Merry Christmas!" my mother’s voice exclaimed. I sagged against Angel in relief and held up my finger for him to be very, very quiet.
"Hi Mom. Merry Christmas!" I glanced at the clock. It was almost one. We’d come home at about eight that morning and gone right to sleep.
"How is everything?" Joyce asked.
"Good!" I replied quickly. "Everything is…good. Mom, can I call you back? We’re uh…working on dinner…I’ll call you in like a half an hour, okay?"
"All right sweetie. I love you."
"Love you too. Bye!" I hung up the phone and looked up to meet Angel’s eyes.
"Was it a dream?" I asked. He shook his head.
"It was real. What I don’t know is if this is real." My hand reached involuntarily for his face and traced his mouth. I felt his breath on my hand and shivered. Tears sprung to my eyes.
"I remember Angel. I remember everything about Thanksgiving…and I remember the last four days. I remember them dying, and the darkness, and…and I remember all that terror and pain and horror. I remember Hell. I remember darkness."
"You remember winning," he told me softly. I bit my lips to hold back tears. "You can cry." I shook my head.
"Not until I know. I have to know if this is real. If we’re safe. If you’re really human," I whispered. "We have to talk to the Oracles." He nodded and took my hand.
"Come on." We got out of bed and tidied ourselves up. I called Giles to tell him what we were doing, and then Willow and Xander just to hear their voices. They said everything was all right. The world was just the way we had left it. No one knew anything about a black sky though, or prophecies. Everyone was celebrating Christmas (well, Willow’s family wasn’t).
Angel and I drove to L.A. in his black convertible. He had this funny amazed expression on his face as he drove down the highway in the sunlight, the wind ruffling his hair.
I wanted to be happy, but I was so afraid it would all be taken away again. I knew, if I was alive, I wouldn’t survive that. This had to be real, or…I couldn’t even imagine the other.
It turned out the entrance to the Oracles was under the post office. There’s irony for you.
"We don’t have a gift," Angel said as we stood outside the portal, readying to go in.
"Who cares?" I said. "We went to Hell. On Christmas. Who needs a gift?" And I stepped into the portal. Couldn’t be as bad as the other places I’d been that day.
It was the same room that we found everyone in when we stepped into the Hellmouth, except this one seemed solid. No flickering walls, no glimpses of fire beyond. Just white marble. And the Oracles.
"What have you brought us?" the woman asked.
"Questions," I replied. There was a pause and then she smiled softly.
"Very good. Ask away."
"What happened?"
"To what?" the man asked.
"The world! What happened?"
"You restored the Balance," the female Oracle replied. "For hundreds of years the balance has been tipping, slowly but surely. No one noticed a few more vampires, a little more evil in the hearts of men. And by the time it was increased significantly, no one thought to look back on what it had once been. The world has been warped, skewed into another, darker dimension. The world you knew was not the world the Powers had created. The End of Days was only the finale to hundreds of years of careful planning by the Darkness."
"So what happened?" Angel asked.
"You two defeated the Lords of Hell, thereby banishing them back to their dimension. The earth you woke to was the true one," the male Oracle answered.
"So everything’s the same, except no End of Days?" Buffy asked, frowning slightly.
"It’s not exactly the same, but for the most part. There will be less demonic activity than you are used to, and the Hellmouth is closed once and for all. Other things will be different, but they are small things, and you may never run across one, or if you do, you may not know it for a change. Only the ten who faced the Darkness shall remember the other world."
"And Angel? Is he really human? And how?" I asked, unable to look at him for fear the news would be bad.
The female Oracle looked upon Angel with almost…kindliness. "You have served the Powers That Be well," she told him. "You gave up all happiness to fight against the Darkness, and because of that action, and your success in stopping the Lords of Hell, they have granted you your humanity." Angel opened his mouth but she held up a hand, forestalling it. "Do not worry. No harm shall come to anyone because of this. You have fulfilled your destiny. Now your life is your own. Use it well."
I wanted to collapse at their feet and weep tears of thanksgiving. I wanted to scream.
I stood there and watched them turn away. They paused and looked back. "The Powers wish you happiness," the female Oracle said. Her male counterpart continued, "You are not lower beings."
And then they were gone. And seconds later we were too, back in that cave.
It all came rushing at me. All the pain and loneliness of losing them, all the terror and despair of Hell. All the joy and love of Angel. We sunk to our knees together and held each other and cried for all that we had lost and everything we had found.
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