AN: The first little scene is in first person, from Angel’s POV. I hadn’t intended to have any first person from him, but this bit really wouldn’t have worked in third person. The other scene is not from Angel’s perspective, but you’ll just have to figure that one out yourself.
ANGEL
Hope can be such a cruel thing. Hope found me everyday in the small hospital room, tucked away in some windowless corner of the hospital. I was grateful for the location, but I knew what it meant.
It meant that they didn’t have hope. She had no need for a window to the outside world; she wasn’t going to wake up. I would gladly give up my long hours by her side for the tiniest sliver of hope in the doctors’ hearts. I would give up anything if it meant she was just that much likelier to wake up. But there was nothing I could do beyond spending my days with her, and my nights on the streets, in the alleys, and in the cemeteries, doing my best to fill the void she had left in this town. When I finally retired a few hours before sunrise, my dreams were always filled with her.
There was nothing I could do but hope, and hope I did. Her friends had hope too, and they suffered for it. Every day she didn’t wake increased the veiled pain in their eyes. Hope can be such a cruel thing to the person who has it, but the lack of hope can be even crueler to the person they do not hope for.
We all held onto our hope for Buffy as if it were a lifeline keeping us from sinking, for we would surely sink beneath waves of despair without it. We all hoped for Buffy, but I was the only one who hoped for Faith.
~~~
“You told me I was just like you. That I was holding it in.”
“Ready to cut loose?”
“Try me.”
“Okay then. Give us a kiss.”
I felt the words as I walked through the corridor lined with doors. I passed one that stood open on my right, and through it I caught a glimpse of a small blonde girl rocking a brown-haired baby doll in her arms and singing softly under her breath. As my feet continued to carry me forward, my head turned to the left and I watched as an older woman heaved a bottle at the wall, letting the glass shatter into a million glittering pieces that rained down upon the battered armchair and the small girl crouched behind it.
Through another door, a girl in her pre-teens sat in her bed, talking on the phone to a friend. As the shouts elsewhere in the house increased in volume, she turned the volume up on her stereo, hoping to drown out the intrusion in her fragile little sanctuary. I know this place. I heard harsh sobs and loud, grating laughter through the wood of the door across the hall. I placed the back of my hand against the wood, as if I were checking to see if a fire raged within. Laughing at my ridiculous precautions, I placed my hand on the knob and tried to open the door, only to find that this scene was locked to me. Frowning, I continued down the hall in search of friendlier places to visit.
In one scene, a teenager embraced an older woman, the two crying happy tears. A younger girl slipped unobtrusively into the background and slowly began to change things: adjusting the time on the clock, unscrewing the lightbulb in the refrigerator, untucking the covers on the bed. I alternated between wanting to shout at her for disrupting the peace, the rightful order, and wanting to smile at her childish antics.
I tried opening another closed door, but this one too was locked.
Peering into another open door, I was met with a horrible battle. People were screaming, running, fighting, and dying as a scaled monster towered above them all, roaring its supremacy. My eyes alighted on a small girl in a pink dress, and I recognized her from the second room. I strained my eyes to see what such a young creature was doing in a place like this, but the door closed in my face, and my feet propelled me backwards from the girl in the door.
Still moving backwards, I yelped in surprise when my back struck a solid object. Whirling around, my eyes widened as I found myself face-to-face with a short, balding man with thick-rimmed glasses and a grey suit.
“I am one with the cheese,” he said solemnly, directing my eyes to the slice of cheese pinned to his breast pocket.
Nodding and smiling, I walked as quickly as I could away from him, and entered a door filled with the scent of hay. The room shook every so often, but the girl in the corner did not budge; she was too intent on her own pain to notice the outside world.
Stepping away from that room and its dismal occupant, I was shocked to realize that I had reached the end of the corridor. One final door stood between me and...what? Freedom? Life? Death? Oblivion? Only one way to find out. I gripped the cold metal tightly in my hands and prayed that this closed door would not be locked to me as the others had.
I was in a large, elaborate bedroom. In front of me a dark-haired girl lay belly-down on a bed, chewing on a Twizzler. White noise flooded my ears, the sounds of cries and blows escalating into a furious pitch until my hand reached out and silenced the stereo. The girl rolled over and gazed at me, a small smile playing with her lips.
I felt as though I knew her, although I couldn’t remember how for the life of me. “How’ve you been?” I said in an attempt to make conversation.
She shrugged and swung her arm out across the apartment full of cardboard boxes. “Got money, a place to stay....I think I’m gonna like it here.”
I gave her a small nod. “Good to know.”
“Got a question for ya,” she announced, standing directly in front of me. “Ready yet?”
“Try me.” I didn’t understand the words passing between us, but somehow I knew they were right.
“Always confident, to the end. Thinking you’ve got it all figured out. But you don’t. You don’t know what evil is. You don’t know what’s coming. You don’t even know who you are. Tell me, what’s your name?”
I blinked at the silly question and opened my mouth to reply but the sounds froze on my tongue. That can’t be right. What was I going to say? “The Slayer?” I hazarded weakly.
She saw my confusion and she laughed. “I knew it. I knew you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.” Her brow furrowed. “Gee, maybe you’ve got brain damage.”
“I’m the damaged one?” I said incredulously. “Look at you!”
We both looked down at the knife protruding from her gut. She looked back up at me with a pained expression.
“Are you ever gonna take this thing out?”
I tried to pull away, but my hand was holding the knife and wouldn’t budge. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed to the ground, so far below. We stood and looked down at the broken, bleeding body on the pavement.
“Did you ever wonder,” she began, “if things would have been different if we’d never met? What if you’d been in Boston, and I’d been here, with Giles and all your little Scoobies? You think you’d still be here right now? Or would I be lying in that hospital bed?”
I sat in a hard plastic chair beside the body, folding my hands over its own. Our hands rose and fell with every steady breath.
“Or is it just like fate?” she continued. “You know, there is no choice. You were gonna be here no matter what. You think about that stuff? Fate and destiny. I do. I try not to, but I do.” She looked down at her hands, trapped in my own. “There isn’t much else to do around here. But I guess you got a sense of that.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, unwilling to admit that I didn’t understand.
She turned away from the body in the bed, and moved to stand before the broken window. “Stop sitting on your tuffet. You gotta get out of here.”
I frowned, and said the only sensible thing I could think to say. “What about you?”
“Lots to do before little sis gets here,” she murmured so low that I wondered if I was meant to hear it. “So,” she said as she sat down by the bed, “how does this work?” She lifted one limp arm and then let it drop back to the bed.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You going to throw me off the roof?”
“Again?” she said, raising her eyebrows at me. “You gonna stab me again?”
She extended her hand that held the bloody knife. I took it from her, and held it in front of my eyes, studying the patterns of the dried blood. Then, as if in a trance, I raised my other hand, wrapped it around the blade, and squeezed, watching the blood flow across the viciously elegant curves. I passed her the knife, and she repeated my actions before holding it out over the physical body that separated us. I wrapped my own hand around hers, and together we positioned it over the heart of the body on the bed, the red tip of the weapon just barely touching the clean white sheet that covered the thin form. Our blood mingled in a crimson stain creeping across the whiteness.
A soft breeze blew through the broken window, carrying the scent of summer. The pathetic thing suddenly jerked upward on the bed, mouth emitting a piercing shriek that banished the wind and the summer. The scent of autumn leaves tickled my nose as the lights began to flicker under the power of the earth-shattering scream. Through it all we sat, hands clasped on the knife that was now embedded in the body’s chest. The knife that had seen both of us undone. Autumn gave way to winter and darkness fell upon the world as it underwent the throes of death and rebirth.
TBC
A/N: So there it is. Another chapter, and much quicker than the last one (ironic, because I was expecting this chapter to be really hard). Anyway, yet another dream sequence. How does this one rank in terms of indecipherableness? Oh, and many lines might remind you of Graduation Day Part One, This Year’s Girl, or Five by Five (Ats). They’re not my creations; I’m just playing with them for awhile.
This is the part where I ask you to review.
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