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*
It doesn't make sense.
All vampires are drawn to the Hellmouth, feeding off its colossal energy and ripe human population surrounding and living on top of it. Apparently there's still humans here, Angel listening for their heartbeats and smelling them. But no vampires. None apart from him.
Bewildered, Angel investigates from Kingman's Bluff and Docktown, to the Bus Depot, and way past UC Sunnydale's sprawling quad.
Even Willy, owning Willy's bar, hasn't popped up.
Except for a payphone call, on the corner of Maple Court and State Street:
"Listen, Angel. I dunno what to tell ya. My customers split 'nd I gotta feelin' this whole thing is much too complicated for a mook like me."
*
He checks Giles's apartment, knocking away.
No answer.
Giles isn't ignoring potential visits either, Angel can tell.
(Because there is no Giles anywhere inside.)
Okay... that means Buffy's Watcher, and possibly everyone else, decided to meet up at Sunnydale High. For research. They have to had noticed what's been going on. In the last two days, in town. He hasn't heard from Buffy either. (Even if they're only having... potential visits.)
Angel chances it, marching the shadowed streets.
He hasn't exactly been welcomed back with open arms since returning, after Buffy killed him.
But something's... wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Like a bone-deep ache running throughout him, pushing tears behind Angel's eyes. Unexpectedly.
He needs the answers.
No matter what.
*
During one of Wesley Price's lectures—earlier in the week, to Buffy and Faith—the entrance of the Hellmouth has been named as 'the center of everything evil' in Sunnydale. According to the Watchers Council. It strikes Angel as odd for it to be beneath a public school's library.
Once he's at the double doors, Angel's vampiric senses heighten. And roar in panic.
Blood...
So much blood...
*
Once inside of Giles's library, Angel nearly gags on the stench.
He claps a palm over his nose and mouth.
Angel's fangs involuntarily elongate.
Blood...
The amount of... blood spilled, curdling into dark rot.
(What in the Hellmouth is going on?)
"Willow, no," Angel mutters, going to her unmoving form first. Her eyes gored out, caked bloody. No pulse. No nothing left to indicate Willow survived this. Willow's neck also punctured. Vampire fangs. But through the left-side of Willow's chest, a broken chair-leg, a 'stake'...
He notices parts of the library-railing's wood also broken, and eventually circles to find the missing parts...
A splintered 'stake' piece of wood-railing, much thicker, pins Oz against an upended library-stack... Xander, drained dry, eagle-spread and prone to the floor with another 'stake' shoved into Xander's back... a third 'stake' in Cordelia's heart, ripping her expensive blouse...
Looks like a fourth 'stake', and fifth, and sixth and seventh and eighth, impale Wesley Price's hands and feet. Along with Wesley Price himself.
They're all bitten in the neck.
They're dead.
(But not undead.)
Angel searches frantically for Buffy among their corpses left to rot for hours. Buffy's scent. Buffy's golden-blonde hair. Nothing.
He does discover a fading heartbeat.
"Oh god no... Giles..."
The last 'stake' wobbles, as Giles's lungs struggle for air.
"Giles..." Angel repeats quietly, going to a knee. "Don't move. I'll try to get you help."
As blood spurts suddenly out of nostrils, leaking red, Angel's hunger flares.
He swallows down instinct.
(Not so difficult when Angel practiced it for so long...)
Oh, god, this is bad. Bad because Giles, who Angel knows hates him still, allows Angel to touch him as kindly as possible. One of Giles's clean, white handkerchief balls up in Angel's fingers dabbing over Giles's face. His eyeglasses smashed. There's another deep fang-puncture wound.
"Slayer..."
It is more of a bubbling of fluid than Giles being able to speak.
"Yes, where's Buffy?" Angel urges, forgetting about help as soon as they think of her. He can't find her here. Buffy's own scent.
With a cough, Giles's bleeding lung fully ruptures.
"N-no..."
Giles wheezes, drowning.
"Nn-now... she's... the... Slayer."
Angel's eyes squint. He knows she's the Slayer. He doesn't understand what else there is that Giles means.
But in seconds, Giles dies while mid-bloody breath.
"Sorry," Angel mumbles again, reaching for the 'stake' and yanking it out. And plunging it into Giles's heart to prevent the turning.
*
He checks Buffy's house, without knocking politely this time.
Joyce Summers went out of town for a week. Due back tomorrow.
No Buffy.
Her room looks normal. And every other room Buffy would be in, from top to bottom, looks normal enough.
Angel shakes his head, hurrying out towards the far edge of Sunnydale he hasn't visited yet.
Something's very wrong...
No Buffy...
No vampires in sight...
However, a vampire attacked all of Buffy's friends... and killed them... and Angel can't get himself to stop imagining her dead. Buffy wouldn't give up. He won't either. Angel decides to run, towards Mt. Sinai Memorial Gardens and its hidden cemetery-chapel, on Sunnydale's outskirts.
*
The sunrise glows from the horizon.
It prickles at Angel's undead skin, as a warning, before coming up. Angel hoists one of Buffy's rolled-up quilts tucked under his armpit. Risking his own 'life', and erupting into uncontrollable flames, seems so unimportant. Especially when thinking about the fear of loneliness.
He heads inside an emptied, timeworn chapel, its windows heavily curtained in drop cloth barriers.
(It should... it should have been emptied...)
"You wanna know something?"
Tears prickle Angel's eyes, as hot as the flames coming.
"Me and Willow read your diaries a while back." The vampire-girl snarls softly, amused. "What you did as Angelus... I didn't know they inspired me."
Behind her, Faith has been tied to an old, wood-made altar.
Faith's head bleeds profusely.
She's barely breathing.
"I didn't know turning into a vampire would be scary. And it was. I was so scared. I didn't think it could happen to me, because I'm the Slayer."
Angel's tearful eyes widen.
The Slayer...
Buffy's scent, always fragrantly pleasant inside his senses... gone.
"Now that you're here, Angel? It feels right."
It moves like Buffy; it smiles sweetly like Buffy. It wears Buffy's maroon cardigan newly out of the laundry two days ago. The bronze and heart-shaped buttons stained. Buffy's camisole looks stained too, with dried maroon-colored blood. And Buffy's jean-overalls. She only put them on when feeling extremely vulnerable, Angel remembers that. Buffy's golden-blonde hair, flecked in clods and clumps of human gore, untied.
"Say something."
"I am here. I am here, Buffy," Angel repeats, forlorn. "I always be here for you."
It shriek-laughs out of nowhere, inhumanly loud. From nearby, Faith grimaces in and out of consciousness.
Those vampiric, yellow-bright eyes narrow.
"Buffy's not here right now," it quips. "Please leave a message after the beep... bbbeeeeee-PUH!"
Growing horrified, Angel watches as it uses Buffy's silver cross, the one Angel gifted her, to burn itself. On the tongue. The cross caresses pink flesh, scorching it blackened. It then drops the cross past the opening of Buffy's lips, holding them tightly shut. Smoke trickles out.
"I am going to fix this, Buffy," he vows, unsure of how. No matter what else happens, Angel won't leave her.
(Or leave it to do worse.)
As a response, the demon wearing Buffy's face... it grabs onto one of the drop cloths, tearing it down.
Sunrise directly hits Angel, engulfing him. He yells, scrambling to get away.
The Slayer watches his face vamping out, smiling bigger.
"There you are," it says, holding him as Angel whimpers out in pain. Buffy's kiss, deceptively loving. "Oh. Pain makes you taste sweeter."
"Nn... Buufff..."
There's no punctures. There's no vampiric bite-marks on her neck. There's no heartbeat.
No...
The Slayer, 'Buffy', is no longer a victim. Buffy is dead and gone.
He cries, hushed.
"I know what we both want," it says soothingly. "To kill 'em. To kill 'em all, right?"
No...
"I got rid of everyone in our way, Angel. How about we go and visit the Mayor? And we let him know who actually runs this town?"
Everything Buffy is, everything she stood for... is gone...
He regrets looking for an answer.
That bone-deep ache overcomes Angel. He reaches for Buffy's bloodied cheek, stroking her.
If she's gone, then so am I...
"God... I loved you, Buffy." Solemnly, Angel eyes her monstrously vampiric features, Angel's own wet with tears. "In death and beyond that."
Kissing it, he feels fangs bumping up—both sets of their vampiric fangs—while Angel's lips cover hers.
The Slayer lustfully growls, hugging him.
And the small, silver cross burns Angel, in The Slayer's hand, pressing up against his lower back.
He fiercely pushes The Slayer into the stream of sunlight, as it writhes and shrieks again—pained, and Angel determinedly runs to hug it mercilessly to Angel's front. It is no longer human. It is no longer Buffy, no longer stronger than a much older vampire like Angel.
Angel holds them together to him. He basks in the warmth Angel secretly longed for. To hold the girl Angel loved underneath. As a man.
Until they burn, they flame, from existence.
*