Scribes Of Angel

Bitter Cold

Angel, Angel (gen), but it don’t snow here

      For this relief much thanks; ’tis bitter cold
      And I am sick at heart.
            —Shakespeare, Hamlet, Scene I, Act I

*

I.

One of Liam’s earliest memories is the white blanket of snow muting the lush, green countryside. He watches, small hands pressed to the fogged glass, the cold searing into his fingertips, as the flakes fall and fall and cover the living earth.

II.

Winters in Russia are so cold that Angelus’ skin becomes translucent; he hardens like a wax figure, and for the first time Darla can look at him and not see the flushed, lusty young man she brought to his knees in an Irish alley. She is still off balance after what he did to that seer girl, and when he looks at her, his deathly pale visage and grave-dark eyes, she shivers.

III.

The most religious Buffy’s upbringing got was Santa Claus, so she never really thought much about miracles. She and Angel walk down Sunnydale’s ghost town streets, the sky dark with snow clouds. Angel is pale as ice, and his face is upraised, catching the snow; it doesn’t melt when it touches him, but he is still there for it to touch. For a moment, looking at Angel’s bewildered, beatific face, she is sure that this miracle was made just for her, purchased with her tears.

IV.

Torture and hell and dating, and Angel has never hurt like this. All these spells and whistles, and his hidden human body still contains a world of pain the likes of which not even his imagination—which is considerable in this respect—could conceive. He can hear the riots in the streets though they are stories beneath where he stands in this skyscraper prison, and even his weak human nose can smell the smoke, fires burning to choke the sun off at the horizon, the sky black.

Today it is snowing in Los Angeles, and Angel has never felt so cold.

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