Collateral Damage
Author: Ares
Livejournal
Word count: 2273
Rating: NC15 for sex scene
Pairing: B/A
Written for Writer’s
Toybox the Four Horsemen Challenge.
A special shout out for Jo. She’s an amazing beta. Thank you, sweetie.
Summary: Buffy and Angel pick up the pieces after the apocalypse.
*
Collateral Damage
“No! I won’t let it. Angel! Angel?” Buffy turned her tear-streaked face and
looked up at her lover. “This isn’t happening. It isn’t happening! I won’t
let it! We won’t let it. No. Nooooooo! Take it back!” She beat her fists
against his chest, her cries escalating until her whole body was
convulsing, the sobs wracking her slight frame. Buffy collapsed into the
arms he held out ready to catch her.
It was all he could do: catch her. His mind had ground to a halt. He was in
shock, they both were. He felt like he was on auto pilot, his limbs doing
what they needed to do, his mind far away, detached, looking on, aghast.
His tears mingled with hers, tepid where hers were hot, as they both slid
to the ground, his legs and hers losing what strength they had had to keep
them standing.
An eternity passed in the seconds and minutes that dragged by. All of a
sudden Buffy was turning in his arms. Her lips found his in a fierce kiss.
She devoured his mouth, her tongue forcing its way in and finding his.
He pulled away. His mind did work, after a fashion, it seemed. “Buffy…”
“No, Angel. Let’s have this. It doesn’t matter any more. I want this. Give
me this.” And she was on him, attacking his mouth once again. Buffy pushed
him down until he was on his back. She shucked off her jeans and pulled
down her panties. The pink lace flew away with the flick of her wrist.
Angel lay there, mind having faltered in the face of what was to come. Would
it really be that bad? he thought, to lose himself to the devil?
Buffy’s fingers found another use. They tugged down the zipper of his
jeans. She pulled him free, he was hard and aching, and she straddled him,
taking him inside her. This was what she had been longing for, all these
years. She groaned: despair fighting the sensation of bliss. She was
desperate for Angel to feel the joy of it. Buffy yanked off her shirt and
undid her bra. Reaching for his hands, she placed them on her breasts. In
one fluid movement he was leaning upward and kissing her, using his hands
in a way that made her want to scream. Buffy began to move, slowly at
first, teasing him. But her need overcame her and she picked up her pace.
She wanted him so badly, she…
Angel spun them around: he was on top, her legs wrapped about his waist,
and he was pounding into her. Buffy bit her lips and kissed him hard. It
was the undoing of him. The taste of her blood brought him to the brink
and, they both spun away into the abyss.
+++
Standing in the doorway, Angel watched the clouds racing across the sky in
a dark blanket of howling wind.
“Are you going out?” a voice behind him asked.
It was day, or what passed for day today. The sky only appeared marginally
lighter with the sun shining. The layers of dust in the air prevented the
rays of the sun fully breaking through. He could see the wind, heavy with
the ashes of the dead. Sunlight bounced away, in loathing, one could think,
leaving behind a residual glow. It was not always so dull and dark. Some
days the sun did break through - the ash and dust swept away - warming the
earth with its wonderful gift. If not for that small miracle, all life on
earth would have long perished. As it was, most of it had. Perished, that
is. Armageddon had come on the backs of man and missiles. Whole populations
were decimated. Demon and human, animal and plant, vaporised in the blink
of an eye. Angel had no doubt that man had been pushed, steered to the
brink of the precipice and allowed to topple over.
Without turning around, he said, “I’ll do a sweep. You stay here and look
after the little ones.”
“Be careful.”
“Always,” he replied, and then he stepped out and into the wind.
Without the building as a shield, the gale tore at him, at his clothes,
threatening to rip them off his back. He stalked against the pull, and made
it across what was left of the street. The town had been a small one, a
main street with a bank, a motel, a bar, a restaurant and a few stores. The
empty shells stood testament to a town that had died along with its
citizens. A couple of side roads led off to homes and housing and that was
where he was headed. None of the houses were intact. Fire had destroyed
most: others had been pillaged and ransacked, barely standing skeletons of
what had once been home and shelter to ordinary folk. Angel knew there was
little hope of coming across anything useful but he had to try. Besides,
that wasn’t his primary concern.
The stink of death pervaded the first house he stepped into. His nose,
sensitive to death’s odour, led him to two desiccated and entwined bodies
laid out on a bed in a small room. Between them lay something wrapped in a
shawl. Angel averted his eyes. Many hadn’t been able to face up to the fact
that their world had been ripped apart and had chosen to end it rather than
face the hardship ahead. He foraged about in the bathroom and the kitchen,
and he searched about down in the cellar. The place had been cleaned out.
He moved onto the next house, and the next, tiptoeing past the husks of
corpses, human and animal. There was little reward to be found. He continued
on, as he must, until he found himself inside a small, almost intact shack.
Inside were the remains of a vehicle, useless, now, stripped and discarded,
anything useful already scavenged. He cast his eye around the shed and
noticed there was something odd about the oil stain on the floor. There was
a footprint, partially smudged and, when he bent down to touch it, still
wet. Listening intently and using his other senses he discovered there were
two people, one small, a child most likely, hidden nearby. Angel crept away
and returned to where he had left Buffy and the children.
One look at his face had Buffy scrambling for her bag of weapons.
“Where?”
He gave her the route to follow.
The slayer trod warily down the path Angel had told her to go. Excitement
was building inside her. If Angel was right, there were two more people who
needed rescuing. Fortunately, the wind had died to a light breeze, the gale
spent, leaving dust-laden air. Buffy found the shack without any trouble
and, after taking a look inside, set up just beyond the door, out in the
open. She laid down her weapons bag and rummaged inside for the tools she
needed.
A flash of red and blue was the rug she pulled clear of her bag. A couple
of cans followed: tuna, and sweet corn. A packet of crackers was next, and
then three cans of Pepsi. Buffy sat cross-legged and opened one of the
sodas, the hiss of escaping gas loud in the silence. She took a sip,
savouring the drink. It was one of the luxuries they could no longer
afford, but today it was a tool in her armoury. The cracker gave a
satisfying crunching sound as Buffy chewed on it. She sat and waited.
As she knew would happen, a couple of dirty forms appeared as if from
nowhere, their hiding place abandoned when faced with the prospect of a
meal. They were children; one older, a teenage boy, the other a little
girl.
Buffy put down her drink and opened the cans of food. She set them down,
close to the edge of the cloth, and placed the packet of crackers next to
them.
“They're yours. Help yourselves. I’m Buffy by the way.”
The boy and girl stared at her. They were frightened, she could see, but
hunger was a strong motivator, and in a sudden movement the boy had
snatched up the cans and crackers and, dragging the girl away with him, they
disappeared into the background.
Buffy waited quietly. She knew the children would be back. Sipping her
drink, she reflected on how the world had changed and with it, her life.
Buffy gave a guilty start. Hers wasn’t the only life changed. Entire populations
had perished. Families were a rare thing. Buffy was no longer just an
executioner, a slayer. She was out there rescuing people more often than
not. She had her guardian angel with her, and together they scoured the
land looking for survivors, searching for remnants of humanity. Society had
to be rebuilt, and hopefully, for the better. There were pockets of
civilization hidden here and there, in areas distant enough from the
nightmare of nuclear war. These pockets were where they brought the rescued.
There were also enclaves of people that had no resemblance to anything
human in their demeanour. Those people, those feral humans, they stayed
away from. But it wasn’t always possible and Buffy and Angel had had to
confront and kill a few, sometimes in self defence, and not a few times it
had been to rescue a child from their evil clutches. Cannibalism was rife.
Buffy shivered. No matter how hungry, she swore she would never resort to
eating human flesh, especially human flesh that had been killed, like cattle,
for that purpose.
Buffy’s keen ears detected movement in the yard. She stretched and stood.
Folding up the rug, she prepared to leave.
“I’m leaving now and you’re quite welcome to join us. We have food and
water. I know you don’t believe me but I promise that we’re not going to
hurt you. We have other children like you with us and we’re on our way to a
better place. Come if you want. It’s up to you. Oh, and my boyfriend’s name
is Angel. He was here before. He’s one of the good guys. He won’t hurt you.”
Buffy turned about and headed back the way she came. Her senses told her
she was being followed. She took it slowly. The town was quiet, and any
trouble Buffy expected failed to show. She was grateful. The kids behind
her would have bolted.
She saw his tall lean form waiting for her outside the building when she
and the children arrived back. She never tired of looking at him. Even
filthy with dirt, he was beautiful. He was a link to her past. He was the
one thing that kept her going, and she had tried to throw it away. She
blushed furiously with shame at what had transpired all those months ago.
In the process of rescuing a girl from a ritual sacrifice, she and Angel
had fallen foul of the Brethren of Talos. The demons, dying at the ends of
Buffy and Angel’s swords, cast one last desperate spell, which sent both
slayer and vampire spinning away into another dimension. It had taken them
days to find the way back home. And when they had, they had fallen through
the portal only to find that the world was no longer as they left it. The
apocalypse had come knocking and somebody had opened the door.
Time moved differently in some dimensions and the one that they had been
trapped in had moved at a much slower rate. Months on Earth had passed by
in a matter of days. They were safe from radiation: apparently her slayer’s
body now had an inbuilt safeguard – courtesy of the Powers That Be - and a
vampire’s, well, it was dead and couldn’t be harmed further that way. Their
mission had become one of salvage and rescue. The odd bit of slaying, a
bonus, she felt.
Angel watched her cross the street, a dusty streak of slayerness followed
by two waifs, a boy and a girl. He had given in to his desires that day,
months ago. He knew Buffy was thinking about it too: he sensed her body
warming in a blush. He wished she would rid herself of the shame of what
she had tried to do. The shock of their world burnt to cinders had Buffy,
and Angel, too, if he admitted it, wanting to die, neither of them wishing
to be the ones picking up the pieces of the world. Buffy had turned to him,
hoping that in the act of sex he would lose his soul. His demon would out
and kill her, giving her peace at last. She knew that Angel’s soul would
find peace too, having left the body to Angelus. But it seemed the Powers
That Be had other plans for them. They had given Angel the gift of his
soul, his to keep. A miracle, Angel thought. He had to believe that one
day, perfect happiness may again be a possibility, for them both. And Buffy
was impervious to the rays of mass destruction, a necessity travelling the
places they were needed.
Angel’s once-only vision had become the real deal. The visions, plural,
were his to guide them. The Powers had deemed it so. Angel had a sneaking
suspicion that he and Buffy had been deliberately led to that alternate
dimension, trapped there, safe, while the world burned.
Angel’s lips lifted and greeted Buffy with a smile. Her own mirrored his.
Buffy gave him a kiss as she passed him by. He moved away, giving the
new-founds space to follow Buffy inside. The world wasn’t perfect, but the
love he felt for Buffy was. And he liked to think she felt the same way. In
fact, he knew she did. It was in her eyes. The world had not ended. It was
just the beginning.
The end.
August 2011.
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