"Immortal Beloved..." XLIV...

Summary: One of my various outcomes following Angel episodes "Girl in Question" to "Not Fade Away"...

Archived at the Buffy Rebecca verse, www.angelfire.com/zine2/buffyrebecca/index.html

Disclaimer: All BTVS characters remain the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and all other owner/creators of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series...

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LA...The battle with the forces of the Senior Partners appears to be reaching its inevitable end...Gunn down, barely breathing as Illyria tries to cover him...Angel, though jubilant as he stood in triumph over his slain dragon, well aware as the hordes round them close in that it may be his epitaph...

An exhausted, battered William barely on his feet as the demons surrounding the little group now move in for the kill...Nearly blind from the blood filling his eyes...As much theirs as his, as far as that goes to comfort him...

A huge fellow reaches him...Green, scaly...Might the humanoid cousin of Angel's opponent, Will notes to himself as he tries to brace to go down fighting...The demon rearing for the final blow...

And falls to the ground with a heavy thud...Dead...A stake protruding from its back...William staggering, sees a horde of young women now sweeping over the panicking Wolfram-Hart forces who fall back in confusion to their Hell portal...The...Yes, no doubt about it...Slayers in hot pursuit...

And now he can, through bloody, bruised eyes, barely make out one of the women standing by his dead former opponent...

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She pulled the stake out with a grunt...And eyeing him coolly, tossed it at his feet...He stared, wiping his weary face, trembling with fatigue and pain...She grabbed him as he stumbled, setting him down carefully, anxiously, smiling a bit now, waving in the other Slayers not occupied in rounding up the surrendering forces of Evil, Inc...Calling "Ladies!..." As they formed a line and each dropped her stake at his feet...Grinning at him as they came up and passed by him...

"Buffy?..." he looked up at her...She turned back from calling first to a woman bearing medical supplies, then to Angel and eyed him...Then the pile of stakes...

"Our picket fence..." she smiled...

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