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Angel scrubbed compulsively at what seemed like centuries of grime on the floor beneath the refrigerator, his arms aching. He stopped suddenly. Hadn't he just finished this?
"Pulling out the ice box? Now I know you're desperate."
Angelus. Angel turned away and kept on scrubbing.
"Still determined to stick it out, are you?"
No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn't seem to get to the concrete. Layer after layer of black grime clogged the bristles of the brush and splattered his hands with filthy water.
"Makes Doyle's death look easy, doesn't it? Just a moment of fire, and it was all over. But for you, it goes on and on and on."
Still he didn't look up. Angelus finally yanked him back by his hair and tore the brush from his hands. "Do you have any idea how pathetic you are? Do you really think that the ‘Powers That Be' give one fig for a poor vampire who went and got himself cursed?"
Angel waited wordlessly until Angelus released the fistful of his hair.
Angelus crouched beside him, speaking reasonably. "You'll never earn forgiveness. What were you thinking? You can't give back the blood you've drunk from all those poor, helpless creatures."
Anger flared at the truth of Angelus' words. "You did it, not me. You're the one who should die!"
"But I am you, remember? You know you still want them. Where do I end and you begin?"
He pointed suddenly to the bodies of Wesley and Cordelia, lying side by side like brother and sister with bloody wounds in their necks. "Did I do that, or did you?"
"No," Angel whispered.
Angelus knelt behind him and curled his right hand around a stake. It felt solid and real. "You do this and you're free. No more pathetic self-hatred. Not more living on the outside looking in. No more running around saving a bunch of ungrateful humans, trying to atone. No more fear of harming them. It all stops."
Angel stared at Wesley and Cordelia's bloodless faces and knew he could not live with these two deaths on top of all the rest. He did not resist as Angelus positioned the stake over his heart. It would take such a small effort. He felt Angelus' hand over his own, strong, immovable. Together they shoved the stake into his heart.
Cordelia hadn't realized she was starting to doze until suddenly the absence of scrubbing sounds brought her awake. She turned quickly to check on Angel. He was asleep again, slumped against the side of the refrigerator, still clutching his scrub brush.
Even in sleep his expression was haunted. She couldn't help wondering what he was dreaming now, who had come to kill him this time. For the millionth time, she wished with all her might that she could dash that horrible amulet into a thousand pieces or hurl it into space. This was not the job she had signed up for. It was wrong, and not Doyle, nor any Oracles, nor Angel himself were going to convince her otherwise.
Angel awoke with a violence that startled her. He looked around wildly and his breath caught in his throat like a sob. He did not seem to see her.
Suddenly he lifted his hand and dashed the brush to the ground with vampire strength, splintering it into two jagged pieces. He picked up the longest one and held it pointed toward his heart, and she realized suddenly that the handle was made of wood.
"Angel!" she screamed and scrambled for the tranquilizer gun. She trained it on him with fierce intensity, her heart pounding. What if he struck before she could fire?
"Angel, put that down!" He looked up and saw her for the first time.
"Cordelia, please," he begged, his voice breaking. "Let me go."
"No way," she said, her voice as inarguable as she could make it. But something in his eyes said he was going to do it.
With an agility she didn't know she possessed, she leaped up and kicked the brush from his hand. It flew across the room. He started after it on hands and knees. "Angel!" she screamed again, her finger tightening on the trigger.
Miraculously he stopped and sat leaning forward on his hands. He was sobbing in earnest now, a heart-breaking sound that made her want to stuff her fingers in her ears and run far away without stopping. Instead she knelt beside him on the spotless floor and held him as best she could without letting go of the gun. He leaned against her but couldn't stop the flood of grief and despair pouring out of him. His whole body shook as he wept.
Just when she thought she might scream, she suddenly noticed the weight of the gun in her hand. Would it help? She wasn't sure, but anything was better than this. She managed to extract one of the darts and plunged it into Angel's shoulder. In seconds he lay limp in her arms.
Angel floated slowly upward through layers of thick white fog. Voices surrounded him, murmurs of hatred, fear, pleading, and rage, but the fog shielded him, and he couldn't understand them. He lay in a sunlit meadow dappled with tall blue and yellow flowers. The sun warmed his bare skin. Hadn't there been a girl here? Any moment now Father would be calling, wanting to know if the work was done, though it was never enough, and never good enough. He heard Kathy laughing, skipping gaily through the flowers, and reached quickly for something to cover himself. But she never came, and the sound of her laughter faded.
Lilting strains of flute and fiddle music reached his ears, together with tapping feet and laughing voices, and he was pulled into the dance, joining hands with the others in the circle, stepping and kicking and hopping in the well-remembered rhythms. When it was over, he threw up his hands and huzzahed with the rest. A mug of ale was thrust into his hand and he gulped it down eagerly. A warm wind blew through the trees, fresh with the pungent scent of newly planted earth.
Then the fog grew thicker, blocking out the stars. He heard voices again, but now they were quiet. He listened, trying to make sense of them.
"It'll have to be done after sunset, when the sea dragon is strongest."
"Strongest??"
"We'll need its help to break the spell."
"But what if it hasn't taken the cooperation workshop?"
"We'll have to try to stay out of its reach."
"And what about the lawyer-boys? They weren't too happy the last time we tried to interfere."
"We'll keep watch.
"Are you sure we can do this alone? Maybe this isn't such a good idea."
"I'm open to suggestions. But we have to do something tonight or that sea dragon is going to rampage through San Pedro harbor. And Wolfram and Hart may become unstoppable."
The voices ceased.
Finally Angel's eyes blinked open. It took him a long, slow minute to recognize the ceiling. He was lying on his back on the kitchen floor with a cushion under his head. His face was stiff with dried tears. The amulet was up on the counter, out of sight.
He must have made some small sound because Wesley and Cordelia's anxious faces appeared in his field of vision. Cordelia held the tranquilizer gun at the ready. "Are you going to behave now?" she asked.
Angel nodded. He felt too weak to move, let alone misbehave in any way. Memory leaked back slowly. He glanced again at the gun in Cordelia's hand and found his voice.
"What was that?"
"Enough phenol barbital to take out a bull elephant," Wesley answered him.
"How . . . long was I . . .?"
"About three hours," Cordelia said.
The best rest he'd had in days, but it only made him terribly hungry for more. He felt as if he could sleep for at least a week straight. He rolled to his side and got an elbow under him, then made an effort and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Every muscle joined the protest.
"What were you guys talking about?" he asked.
Cordelia and Wesley exchanged a look. "Nothing for you to be concerned with," Wesley answered.
He was far too tired to argue. "OK." Wesley raised an eyebrow, but turned as Cordelia handed him the gun.
"All right, well, I'll go get the, uh, you know," Cordelia said. She headed toward the door, then turned back. "Be careful. Don't let him – "
"I won't," Wesley replied.
Angelus came up through the trap door and stood leaning against furnace. "What? Still here? You are a real glutton for punishment, did anyone ever tell you that?" He glanced at the table, piled high with Wesley's books. "Or did you let them stop you?"
Angel stared at him wordlessly, feeling the weight of despair settle over him again.
Angelus shrugged. "It doesn't really matter, I suppose. You'll get it right eventually. In the mean time . . ." He glanced around the kitchen; his eyes lit on the stove. He walked over and turned on the gas. Then he picked up one of Wesley's books and held it in the flames until it was burning brightly. He used the book to light the shelves over the sink.
Angel began to feel the heat as the fire spread along the shelves, eventually leaping high enough to catch the ceiling. Soon he was surrounded by angry orange flames and black, choking smoke. He hid his face from death, coughing in the smoke until finally the flames consumed him.
When he awoke he took long, gulping breaths of clean air and glanced around to make sure the walls weren't charred or blackened. Wesley looked up from his book and watched him closely but didn't speak.
Even the dim kitchen light hurt his eyes. He glanced at Wesley, then crawled past him into the comforting darkness of the study. He found a corner where he could just fit and hunched against the wall with his knees pulled up to his chest, waiting for Angelus to return.
Wesley closed the last dusty leather-bound book with a slow gesture of finality. There was nowhere else to look. There was simply no other mention of the amulet anywhere.
His sense of failure was only exacerbated by the fact that Giles hadn't found anything either. Precious little help he could offer Angel now. Even if this wasn't some form of punishment sent by the Powers That Be, he didn't know how to stop it. And as difficult as it might be, he owed it to Angel to tell him.
He stood up and stretched to ease his cramped and tired muscles, then walked slowly into the darkened study. The lemon fresh scent of the room clashed oddly with the sickly green glow cast by the amulet. Angel hadn't moved since he'd wedged himself into the cramped space between the sofa and the weapons cabinet over an hour ago. Wesley wasn't sure at first if he was awake, but he lifted his head slowly at the sound of hesitant footsteps.
Wesley looked around for a chair but there was none handy so he lowered himself awkwardly to the floor. Angel watched him with hooded eyes. "Did you find something?"
Wesley forced himself to look Angel in the eye. "No, I'm afraid not. And I've looked everywhere I can think of. Twice. Giles has been searching as well. If anything else was written about the amulet, it must have been lost in the intervening centuries."
Angel nodded as if in some inexplicable way the news was a burden lifted. "Wesley . . . you don't have to stay."
It was quite useless to insist that he did, so Wesley said nothing. It occurred to him that despite his long life, Angel probably didn't have much experience with friends who stuck by him in a crisis. As it happened, Wesley didn't have much practice at being such a friend, but he was certainly giving it his best shot. Not that he was helping much now.
Angel rubbed his thumb back and forth across the raised lines and swirls on the amulet, a mindless gesture. Finally Wesley worked up the courage to ask, "Do you still believe what Doyle said was true?"
"I don't know." Angel sounded broken, defeated.
Wesley realized that without help from the chronicles, Angel had no way to stop the nightmares. If they couldn't redeem him, he had nothing left to hold onto.
"Angelus says I'm a fool to think the Powers care at all."
Wesley tried not to look as shocked as he felt. "What – who says that?"
Angel gave no sign that he noticed Wesley's surprise. "Angelus," he repeated. A note of normality crept into his voice, a more subtle sign of despair. "God, I'm an ugly bastard as a vampire."
Wesley blinked, trying to assimilate this most peculiar turn of events. Angelus? He still remembered more vividly than he cared to his own recent encounter with Angel's dark side. He could only imagine the biting truths Angel's soulless self could vent on him. Or . . . twisted truths. He leaned forward.
"Don't you believe a word he says."
"Sometimes the truth is more cruel than a lie. And I was good at cruelty." Angel paused. "Maybe it was all an illusion – Doyle, the Oracles, everything."
"Cordelia's visions are not an illusion. Which means that Doyle's weren't either." In spite of his own misgivings, Wesley knew he could not strip away Angel's last hope. "If Doyle told you the Powers sent this, then maybe it's true. And if they did, they must mean for you to get through it."
"Or maybe I am meant to die. I've been ready to die before. Maybe it's time now. The world doesn't want me. I don't deserve life. I never have."
Wesley suddenly felt as if he were trying to divert the flood waters of Angel's despair with a single sandbag. Still, he had to try. "Now you're talking nonsense," he said. "Look at all the people you've helped here. Look at Cordelia and I. Where would we be without you?"
"You'd find your way. And you wouldn't have to live every day with the danger of what I could become."
"It's our choice to take that risk, not yours. Angel, listen to me. If you die now, at your own hand . . . you'll only be adding one more murder to your list."
For that Angel had no answer.
The silence stretched between them as Wesley groped for words to voice his thoughts. Finally he found them, and spoke with quiet intensity. "We all live at the edge of despair, secretly terrified that at any moment our worst fears about ourselves and the world will suddenly prove true. You live closer to that edge than most of us, and I'm sure that it feels desperately lonely. But the truth is . . . the ground you're standing on is well trodden."
The naked anguish on Angel's face was painful to see, but Wesley hoped it meant he'd thrown him a lifeline, however painful to grasp. He glanced at his watch.
"It's nearly dark. Cordelia and I have a plan to free the sea dragon. Then we'll come back and see you through this, no matter what it takes." He stared intently into Angel's ravaged eyes as if to bind him to life by the force of his own will. "Promise me you'll be here."
To his vast relief, Angel met his eyes
and slowly nodded.