“Spike,” the smooth voice woke the vampire faster than holy water on his face could.  

Standing, Spike was surprised, though he shouldn’t have been, to see himself not in the cell he currently shared with Penn but in a room with Angelus. Looked like his office, or an office of some type: desk, chair, books and books on stuff. Ah, perhaps this was the inner sanctum? But then what had he been laying on? 

Looking down, Spike gave a bark of laughter. The floor. How typical. 

“You rang, your worshipfulness?” 

The smile should have tipped Spike off, but it didn’t. He was just so glad to be out of that sodding hellhole, he didn’t much care what Angelus’ smile looked like. The air really did smell cleaner here, even if it was probably the same air. 

“You want out of the cells?” Angelus asked without preamble, standing from behind his desk like the fucking Lord and Master he was. Oh, he was good at the show. Walking around the wooden monstrosity, all grace and effortlessness. Spike hated to admit that he envied that. Wanker. 

Where was the little slayer? Spike looked around the room again, but didn’t see the blonde bombshell. Smelled her. Oh, he could smell her all over the damn place. All over Angelus. Yeah, the poof was gone over her. 

“Out without the misses?” he wondered. Then Angelus’ words registered. “Out? Of course, I want sodding out of that place. Those friends of the…” he paused, wondered at the mood Angelus was in, and said, “Goddess…are a bunch of ninnies…and pains in my ass, too.” 

“You betrayed me,” Angelus reminded Spike. 

“No,” the younger vampire corrected. On this he was firm. On this he’d make sure Angelus understood.  

But he didn’t take his eyes off Angelus. And he made sure to only raise one finger in defense of his words. 

“I thought I was helping you get Buffy out of your system. As I wasn’t in on the plan,” he shot back, still a little pissed that he hadn’t been part of opening Acathla. Always odd man out. 

“Since I didn’t know you had this grand plan, and thought you were off to completely destroy the world I happened to like, all to rid yourself of the slayer…” another pause. Sighing, Spike finished, “You should’ve trusted me, Angelus. Trusted me with this grand scheme of yours. I only went to Buffy because I thought you really had lost it.” 

“Trust, Spike,” Angelus said. 

That freaky calmness finally alerted Spike to the fact that there was something totally, completely, and absolutely off here. Angelus’ scent was right, the faint Sire/Childe pulsing was there. He looked okay, and didn’t seem to be on drugs, or to have sipped some bad blood. He was still off. But how? 

“It’s all about trust. You should have trusted me to know what was best. What was right for your goddess,” stressed, naturally, and Spike bowed in agreement at Angelus’ words. He wasn’t stupid enough to make a mistake here and get thrown back in that cell. “You betrayed my trust, and I let you live.” 

And hadn’t tortured him in a good long while, either, which had Spike worried. Torture with Angelus, was almost like a form of affection. Or foreplay. 

“You have this one chance to earn it back.” 

“And why,” Spike questioned, suspicious though grateful, “should you grant me this oh, so generous opportunity?” 

The smile was as mysterious as anything Spike had seen, offering no answers to the myriad questions Spike had. Ah, well, eternity was soon enough to ferret them out.  

“Wolfram & Hart. Heard of them?” 

“No,” Spike shook his head, though didn’t relax his stance. “Can’t say I have.” 

“They’re a multidimensional firm with evil little fingers in a variety of pies. And they don’t like that I’ve taken over without their consent. They’ve sent two of their representatives here, supposedly to offer support. As I have no need for anything of that kind,” a faint laugh, which Spike echoed. No, Angelus needed nothing here; he had it all, and then some.  

“You have this one chance to redeem yourself. Keep an eye on Lilah Morgan and Lindsey McDonald, the Wolfram & Hart team. Let me know what they’re up to before they know. Understood?” 

“Why? Oh,” he hastily added, “not that I’m not grateful to be out of that cell, especially now that I have to share it,” a scornful look at his grandsire. “But why keep them around?” 

“They’re after something; what, I’m not sure even they know. Their Senior Partners are keeping something hidden, even from their envoys, and I want to know what it is.” 

“And if I do this…?” 

“Then your freedom, so long as you remain loyal to your god and goddess, is yours.” 

”Agreed,” Spike nodded without thinking on it at all. He didn’t have to. Freedom was always good, and he doubted he’d stray far from the palace, anyway. Dru was here, and from what Spike was able to figure out, she wasn’t leaving Angelus. Or Buffy.
~~~~~~~~~~
She walked through the desert, barefooted in the hot sand, her sundress billowing in the hot wind as the sun beat down on her. She felt none of it, not the heat on her feet or shoulders, not the wind, not the hot desert that stretched out in all directions, a hundred miles of nothingness, and a hundred more. Her eyes squinted in the distance, watching, looking for something before turning to smile at her companion.

“I knew you’d be here.”

“Where else would I be?” she shrugged, and Faith laughed. “So you’re B, eh? Nice to meet ya.”

Buffy led them down a sand dune, both in lightweight summer dresses, both barefooted, walking towards more nothingness that was the desert. “I’m B,” she nodded. “But are you sure you want to be here?”

“No, I want to be anywhere but.” Faith shrugged. She didn’t stop walking, nor did she watch where they walked, but stared at Buffy.  “Don’t have a choice, do I?”

“We all have choices, or so I’m told. But they often suck beyond the telling of it, and leave us with no choice at all.”

Faith laughed, hollow and bitter, but didn’t dispute the words. “He’s coming, you know,” she said as they continued to walk along the desert, making their own path in the sand. “The assassin Quentin sent after you.”

“You know he’ll fail.” It was a statement as Buffy turned to face her sister. “Angelus will kill him before he has a chance to do more than glance at the palace.”

Another shrug, “Maybe.”

“You know better than that, Faith.” They turned as one, and continued walking. “You know this is a bad idea. You know Quentin is an idiot. What you think will happen if this assassin really does manage to get to me, will. Angelus will kill everyone.” Buffy stopped, reached out a hand to stop Faith, too. “Especially you.”

“And if he kills Angelus?” But Faith already knew the answer to that one, too, and they both knew it.

“He won’t,” Buffy smiled with supreme confidence. “Hypothetically speaking,” she laughed, “if he did, then the power vacuum you think will happen – it won’t. This world will not revert back to what it was, nor will a power vacuum form. I’ll take over and everyone will follow me just as they now do Angelus. And then,” she promised, “I’ll kill Quentin, slowly and painfully, and every other Watcher I can find.”

The deadly seriousness of her voice was not lost on Faith.

“I did try to warn them,” she says, voice soft with regrets for the idiot who was about to die.

“They never listen, but then we already knew that.”

They were suddenly standing in front of a cave, the screams echoing from within scared and familiar. They were standing before the cave the First Slayer was created in…the one they’d seen countless times in their dreams. Where they were created, where they were given the choice. Buffy had chosen; she’d chosen to accept that which was offered, though it scared her even now. Faith, however…

“It’s all you now,” Buffy nodded at the entrance, eyes steady on Faith’s.

“What about you? You’ve chosen, right? You chose to accept it.”

“Yes, but that was for a different reason. I chose because....because I had to. You have to chose, because the slayer line goes through you.” She looked at the other woman, her dark eyes betraying her uncertainty. “Don’t worry. It’s what has to be done.”

“How do you know?” Faith demanded.

“I don’t, but She,” Buffy pointed to the First Slayer as she hid in the shadow of the cave. “She’s confident.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Willow looked to the cage where the newcomer stood. He was alone now; Spike had disappeared some time ago and hadn’t been heard from since. No one knew where the blonde went, or how, but they guessed Angelus had something to do with it. There was very little Angelus didn’t have something to do with.

Curling tighter against Oz, Willow kissed his chest absently, eyes closed against the harsh reality of their life.

“I love you,” she whispered, looking up at him.

“I know you do, Will,” he smiled down at her, softly as his hands combed her hair. “But do you really know what you’re getting into?” Before she could do more than open her mouth, he continued. “Do you understand what I mean when I say the wolf has a control I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have? It’s not just something inside me. It’s something I am.”

“I know,” she nodded, smiling. “And I don’t care. I love you, and if this is what you are, then I want to be it, too. This is our world, now; this is reality. We can’t change anything, can’t make it different no matter how we might wish it.”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But I’m not sure that I can live with that. Knowing I turned you into this.”

“It’s my choice. I didn’t choose to love you, it just happened. You didn’t choose to become a werewolf, but you did.” Hesitantly, she added, “I know you can hear them, your family-”

“Pack,” he corrected absently.

“Pack,” she nodded, “I know you can hear them. They call for you in the distance, and they want you to join them. Don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you ask Angelus to let you?”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

She smiled at him, then, brilliantly and lovingly. “Then don’t. Don’t leave me. Ever. If we’re the same, then we’ll never leave the other.”

Oz wasn’t sure that was how it worked, but he was helpless to resist. Willow, the Call, the thought of branding her as his Mate – human and wolf. Need to do just that swelled within him so much he thought he’d explode. And he needed her, needed to feel her body close around him, needed to feel the release a climax with her could bring.

('It lies in all of us,' Angelus voice said. 'The darkness, the passion. The need to be what we truly are, the need to take that which we want. Who we want.')

Lowering his mouth to her, Oz kissed her, hands slipping down her body lightly, gently. “I love you,” he whispered, feeling both man and beast roar. Want. Need. Take. Take, take, take. And he could not wait any longer.

Flipping Willow under him, Oz made love to her. And when she breathed his name, shock and sensation coloring the word, he bit her. Marked her. Turned her. ~~~~~~~~~~
“Do you believe him?”

Angelus turned to look at her, puzzled. “Believe who?” he asked, and finished buttoning the shirt.

“Penn,” Buffy clarified from her spot on the bed where she watched him dress. She was sprawled across the soft sheets, too lazy to move. “Do you believe Penn’s
words?”

“Thou shall not suffer a sorceress to live?” Angelus shook his head, laughed. “Of course not, lover.” Crossing to the bed, he leaned down, kissed her hard and quick, hands fisting in her hair. “But then I don’t believe many. No,” he reassured her, “Penn’s always been like that. Puritan upbringing and all.”

Stretching her on the bed, he covered her soft, willing body with his. “Likes to spout biblical words at you, despite the fact he’s a vampire and supposedly anti all that.”

“You turned him,” she reminded him as her mouth grazed his jaw, neck, throat, clamped down on the skin. Smiled when he shuddered against her, aroused.

“True,” he snorted. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It only means that I developed better taste over the years.”

Smiling, Buffy kissed him. “Where are you going today?” she asked, winding arms and legs around him.

“Meetings, love,” he murmured as his lips trailed down her neck, mouth sucking on her scar. “I think the final inhabitants of Acathla’s world are here, and B’Wanna wants to hold a meeting with the remaining emissaries.”

“Dull,” she sighed, extending her arms over her head, moving suggestively under him. “Dull and boring.”

“And you?” he asked, though he agreed that his day promised to be horribly tedious.

“Walk in the gardens, I think,” she said, eyes closing again. “Maybe with Willow.” There was the faintest thread of hope in her voice that wasn’t lost on either of them, and made Buffy wince. She hated that she had to all but ask permission, hated that she needed his damn okay to do something as simple as walk in the gardens with her best friend.

Scowling, she amended her previous statement and this time, when she spoke, it was in a firm voice, her slayer voice. “Yes, I think I’m going to walk in the gardens with Willow.”

“Okay,” he agreed, surprising her with the speed he did so. She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering at this sudden change. “But take Dru,” he warned.

“Angelus,” she pulled back, laughed. “Even if I didn’t want Drusilla anywhere near me, she’d still be there, watching in the shadows like some damn protector ghost.”

“She likes that,” Angelus agreed. Smiled and kissed her again, slow and deep. “Buffy,” he warned, combing the hair off her neck, fanning it along the dark sheet, tangling the silky locks in his fingers. “Be careful. Willow’s unstable, and I’m not sure her magicks are any better.”

“Do you say that only because you’re worried about me?” she wondered, asking slowly while she watched him closely for an answer. “Or because you want to manipulate some more?”

“I’m saying it,” he growled, still angry over her anger, “because it’s true. But you’re blind when it comes to them, always have been. That’s why it was so easy to threaten them. I knew you’d never let anything happen to your precious friends.”

She shoved him away with a hiss of temper. “Damn you, Angelus. Damn you. This is always about you, isn’t it. What you want, who you think is bad or unstable or whatever. Who you think I should talk to. What I should do. For someone,” she said, standing, uncaring of her nudity, “who claims to be better than the Council, than my friends. Gotta tell you lover,” she chuckled bitterly, “you’re not proving you are.”

She was standing on the balcony again, arms wrapped around herself, hair falling down her back in a glorious waterfall of gold. Angelus wanted to take her right then and there, wanted to fuck her until she couldn’t scream her pleasure any longer. Until he was all she knew, his name the only word she could utter.

“I thought we talked about that.” He stood walked to the balcony, trailed his fingers down her arm. Watched her shiver at his touch. Talking her hand, he brought it to his lips.

“Yeah,” Buffy nodded, relaxed. “Doesn’t seem to matter, though. I can’t forget it.”

“Nor should you,” Angelus said in a move Buffy hadn’t seen coming. She glanced sharply at him, wondering what he was up to now. Narrowing her eyes, she waited, knew he already knew what her suspicions were.

“No,” he chuckled, low and seductive, and her eyes narrowed further. “It’s not what you think.”

“No?” she repeated. “Then what is it? You’re now telling me that my,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “unreasonable anger over something I already knew and can’t change is justified?” she shook her head, looked back out at the landscape, wondering where her anger went.

“Damn you,” she whispered, jerking back to face him. “Damn you to the hell you created, Angelus.”

But there was fire in her eyes, he noted, not tears. She was such a fighter, he thought, stalking closer. Never giving up, never accepting defeat. He wanted her like nothing else in this world.

“Why couldn’t you just let things be?” He gathered her naked body against his. She glared up at him, but her body molded to his, her head lay against his shoulder. “Why couldn’t you just let them be?”

“Because I don’t care about them.” His voice was hard, even in his conviction. His eyes, however, told her something else. Told her that he did care for her.

“But I do.”

“Yes, baby. You do.” He watched her, waited, but she said nothing. She didn’t have to. “You mean to tell me that they would’ve let you be? That they wouldn’t have continued to demean you? And that you wouldn’t have continued to take it?”

“I would have,” she said slowly. “Because underneath it all, they’re still my friends. And when it came down to it, I know they would’ve been there for me.”

“Would they have,” Angelus said in a quiet voice. Buffy didn’t look up at him, held herself closed off against him. With a sigh, he lifted her into his arms, molding her mouth to his.

“Let’s not fight, lover.” He brought her back inside, letting the shimmer that kept her away from potential prying eyes drop from their windows. “Let me make it all better.”

Buffy smiled, kissed him, wondered if she could let him make it all better. She wanted to, wanted to make things better between them. So she let it go…for now. Knowing the niggling anger wasn’t going away anytime soon.

Now when such an issue between them. Sex wasn’t the problem. Trust was.

“I’ll be better if you let me have my way with you before you head off to those boring and dull meetings.”

“I’m not going to argue that.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Willow blinked once or twice, though the light wasn’t any different here than it was in the dungeons. Probably wasn’t different. Seemed brighter, but probably wasn’t. Probably.

“Not what I expected,” she admitted to Buffy as they wandered through the flowers, their scents perfuming the air. Drusilla stood a little ways off, simply watching, and the three guards that often surrounded Buffy when she came to the dungeons did so now, as well. It was a little scary.

“What were you expecting?” Buffy asked, leaning down to smell a flower. Drusilla often picked them for her, their bright orange blossoms lighting something in her room. Buffy wasn’t sure what they were called, but they were beautiful, bursting open with color and scent.

“People hanging from the rafters,” Willow shrugged, her words interrupting Buffy’s thoughts. “Bloodied and tortured. Demons running wild through the place, naked and fornicating as you passed. Basically one big orgy.”

Laughing, Buffy shook her head. “Where do you come up with these things, Willow?”

Demons fornicating? Torture? Not where she could see. Angelus would never allow her to witness something like that. Just as he’d never allow anyone to see them together. Oh, she knew about the invisible whatever he did on their balcony to ensure peeping toms couldn’t peep.

She didn’t say those words, nor did she say how Angelus was so protective, when it was obvious, still so obvious, that Willow wouldn’t ever understand.

She shrugged and kept walking. “Things are different from what you think. Haven’t I tried to tell you that?”

“Well,” Willow hedged, embarrassed, but nodded. “So what’s up?”

It was a simple way to begin the conversation, one used on many occasions. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Willow wanted to take them back. What a stupid question.

Shrugging again, wondering when she’d developed such a blasé attitude, Buffy glanced at Drusilla. “There are some things, nothing too important. Trying to figure out what’s happening in the world, my place in it.”

Drusilla giggled as she wandered along the paths, and Willow watched her wander among the flower, picking an armful of the scented blossoms. “I don’t get it,” the redhead admitted. “Why do you let her near you?”

“Dru?” Buffy asked, smiled at the vampiress as she pouted. “She…” how did one explain Drusilla? “She wants to keep me safe,” Buffy finally settled on. “That’s all.”

“She’s creepy,” Willow announced and shuddered as she deliberately turned in the opposite direction of Dru. “Always looks at everything and everyone with those eyes, talking to Spike down in the dungeons like she can see things that aren’t there.”

“She can, Willow,” Buffy said seriously, a wellness of protective feelings she wasn’t aware existed for Drusilla bubbling over at Willow’s words. “She has visions of what we can’t see. Sometimes they don’t make any sense, sometimes they do. Mostly, she just tries to keep her family together.”

“And are you considered part of her family?” The harsh tone of Willow’s voice had Buffy wincing. Not from the question, but from an almost inherent need to explain. To justify.

“Yes,” she said. They’d both stopped walking now, and Buffy repeated, “Yes I am.”

“Buffy,” Willow started, glanced at the guards. “Why don’t you leave? Escape, take us with you?”

“I thought you got it, Will,” Buffy sighed, sitting on a bench and waving the guards a little further away. They obeyed without question. “I thought I’d explained it well enough so you’d get it. Apparently I was wrong, so I’ll say it again. One. Last. Time. I can’t leave. If I leave, you die. And even if I could find a way to get you guys out, too, there isn’t some big war going on out there,” she waved to the world beyond their walls.

“There’s no big fight, no good verses evil. It’s just life. The life that Angelus changed, but it’s just life. No grand and romantic epic war for us to win.”

Standing, Buffy turned away from her. Stopping, she added over her shoulder, “I’ll have Donato bring you back to the dungeons.”

“Wait,” Willow stood, too. “Buffy, wait. I’m sorry. I just…this is just weird. Everything’s strange.”

“Everything’s been this way for months now, Will. Nothing’s changed.”

“No,” she slowly agreed. “But it’s hard to accept. And with your dreams, I thought that maybe you’d find a way out. You know,” she chuckled, nervous and somehow disconnected from her friend. “Your slayer prophetic dreams?”

Buffy said nothing, staring ahead as if she hadn’t heard Willow. But of course, she had. “Those dreams,” she said eventually, slowly as if she wanted to make sure Willow understood this one time, “are none of your concern. I don’t want to talk about them. (She was chained to the Earth. She was forced to Merge with a Demon. She was Mother, she was First. But she didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand why. And she didn’t want to.)”

“But Buffy-”

“Drop it, Will,” Buffy cut her off with a snap eyes blazing with fierce hatred, power, being. Then, softer, for she could all but taste the fear coming from the other woman, “Please.”

For long minutes a heavy silence lay between them. Finally, when Willow realized Buffy wasn’t going to say anything more, that she wasn’t going to reveal what her dreams were about, or why she was suddenly so hostile, she broke. The silence, that was.

“Thanks for letting me and Oz in the same…cell.” She winced at the word, but continued. “I missed talking to you, Buffy.”

Letting herself soften, just slightly, Buffy nodded. “Yeah, Will. I missed you, too.”

That’s when she learned. She’d known something was off with Willow, but Buffy was so altered herself, that the things about her friends that weren’t as they once were, didn’t immediately register. Oz-same cell-it was so clear now.

“You’re a werewolf.” It wasn’t a question.

A beat passed, then another. Willow said nothing. Finally, Buffy swallowed and said, “Willow, how could you?”

“You did!” Willow cried defensively. “You changed, became what Angelus wanted you to be.”

“No,” Buffy began, but her friend rode right over her.

“I want to be with Oz. He’s a wolf most of the time, anyway. I love him,” she added. “I love him and I want to be with him. Being with him, with all of him, means that I have to change to do so. So I did.”

Buffy shook her head, anger rising within her. At herself, at her blindness for not seeing this coming. Stupid! She should’ve known this would happen. That Willow couldn’t resist not being part of something, of fitting in the only way she could.

“Now we’re mates,” Willow said proudly.

“Yes,” Buffy agreed in a strangled tone. “And now you’re going to change, too. You’re going to turn into a wolf. And  you’re never going to be able to stop. Not when you change your mind, not when you’re tired of it. Never.”

“I don’t want to,” she defended herself. Her choice. “It’s not like you can ever leave Angelus,” she pointed out. “Now I can’t leave Oz.”

“They’re two different things,” Buffy snapped and stood. She jerked her head to her guards, eyes a swirl of silver. The air hummed with her power. “And that’s just one more thing you can’t accept or understand.”

Turning sharply on her heel, she left Willow in the garden. The guard would take her back to her cell. The cell she now shared with Oz. Her mate.

Stupid. She knew this was coming. Should have known. She put them in the same cell. She knew Willow was weak willed. But Oz?

It lies in all of us.

Just what had Angelus been telling Oz that made him go against everything he’d ever believed in and do this to Willow?

It was this damn planet. It was the differences in the air, the power, the very being of this world. And that was all Angelus’ fault. Listening to her friend (Is she truly your friend when she doesn’t even take the time to listen to you? Hmmm?) and agreeing that Willow should have her Oz. If that was her only comfort, then she should have that. But this world. That was Angelus.

Storming through the castle corridors, she sought him out. ‘You knew and didn’t stop them. Damn it, you knew what could happen now that everything with demons are magnified.’

‘And this is about, what?’ his lazy draw came back to her.

‘You know damn well what it’s about,’ she snarled. ‘Willow and Oz. The Werewolf Mates that now live in your dungeon.’

Clearly, as if he was right next to her, Buffy heard his snort through whatever freaky mental link they had. ‘I wondered how long they’d wait before he turned her.’

Though plainly defined words escaped her, though she didn’t actually say anything to him, the meaning was there. He didn’t need to hear her articulate it to know exactly what she meant.

This was over. With the turning of Willow into a Wolf, Buffy was no longer going to play by his rules. She was the slayer. The Slayer. The slayer didn’t follow orders, didn’t follow others. The slayer did as she pleased.

Judge. Jury. Executioner.

The slayer – Buffy – was no longer going to follow the path Angelus laid out for her.

“No more,” she said as she banged the doors opened to the room he was in. It was empty, but she didn’t doubt that. She’d given him enough notice to clear the conference room of whomever before she arrived.

“Willow is weak, and I know that. She wants to fit in, and I know that, too. She wants to be accepted, and by doing this…by allowing herself to be turned by Oz, she thinks she has. It’s my fault, partly, for thinking she wouldn’t do something so life-altering. It’s your fault because you knew it and still allowed him to remain the wolf.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. Her words were accompanied by a wave of energy that blasted him a few steps backwards, and overturned everything in the room. The heavy wooden table, the three dozen chairs, the sideboard with refreshments.

“You’re the god of this land, Angelus. You can do anything you damn well please. You knew what Oz was going through. Knew what he was capable of. Hell, you encouraged him, and don’t tell me you didn’t.”

“They knew what they were getting into, baby,” he shot back, stalking forward, oblivious to the damage she’d caused. “It’s most certainly not my fault that they weren’t careful when they were screwing like bunnies.”

“Yes, it is” she snarled back. With those parting words, she spun around and stormed out of the room and ran. Her heels flew off, and she only paused long enough to rip the hem of her dress to her knees. (No one sees you, lover. Your body is mine.)

Ran, producing a stake out of air merely because she thought it. Ran, looking for those to kill. Faster and faster and faster. One, two, seven, Buffy lost count of those she staked. Vampires, always vampires. Twisted a demon until bones snapped and blood gushed.

She knew he loved her. Knew that though he hadn’t said the words (“I love you,” he whispered, holding her close to him as they looked out at the ocean.) that he did.

Betrayed. He was betrayed over her blame. Tired of always being the bad guy. But he was, in a way he always would be. The bearer of the truth always took on the title of ‘bad guy’. And yet he was hers. Her lover, her love, her safety and comfort and home.

She disgusted herself. There was gore everywhere. There was recriminations everywhere.

It wasn’t Angelus’ fault. It was hers.

(It was Willow’s for being weak. It was Oz’s for wanting what he couldn’t have in their other world. It was Willow’s for not understanding, never understanding.)
~~~~~~~~~~
With a roar, Angelus followed her. All his planning, all his hard work crumbed before him.

‘This isn’t over, lover,’ he informed her.

His rage was blinding. Never, not even when he first awoke trapped in a little cage, the soul firmly in place of the body, was he so furious. Slamming out of the room, he tracked her. She wasn’t there. Missing. Gone.

Snarling, he looked to her guards who were just now beginning to right themselves. In her anger, she’d pushed them away, smashed them against the wall. One was bleeding, another held his broken arm at an awkward angle.

Still she wasn’t there. He couldn’t sense her anywhere. Not through their Mate’s Mark, not any other way he could just moments ago.

“Damn you,” he snarled to the Buffy-empty hall.

She hid from him – not just physically as she was now, no this was just one more thing she hid from him, kept closed off from him. Sprinting down the hall, he moved faster than natural, scouring their home, the dungeons, the gardens, everywhere.

Panic. Full-fledged fear. He couldn’t lose her.

Damn Angel for never worrying about his place in her life. Damn that stinking soul to a thousand thousand lifetimes of the deepest, darkest hells.

She wasn’t in the damn palace. Where the fuck was she? He couldn’t find her, not physically, not psychically, mentally, or through the Mark.

She was gone.

“Sire,” a cowering minion said in a shaky voice when Angelus returned from his fruitless hunt, returned to the room where it all began because he didn’t want to return to their rooms. Not without her. “Sire, Glorificus desires an audience.”

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