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doyleLate entry for the And Then ficathon (for stories set after Not Fade Away).
Title: Clock Hands in a Bar Mirror
Author: Doyle
Pairing: mentions of Buffy/Spike and Eve/Lindsey
Rating: PG-13
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyanne04 wanted Angel, Spike and Illyria: 'I'd like to see them get out of that alley alive and then the emotional aftermath when the adrenaline dies away.' Rejected title for this was Five Things About Time (rejected since with the Nina one refusing to work there are only four).
**
Some of it feels like a dream, the way he wishespretends that everything he felt before the soul was a dream. The fight itself is a paradox, lasting eternity and lasting a second. He thinks of the hell that he used to reassure Cordy and Wes he didn't really remember. Time was like that there, forever and nothing, and he wishes he still had somebody who needed him to tell comforting lies.
He doesn't wake up until the demons vanish, disappearing back into the shadows and leaving them in the alley, covered in too much blood and mire for the pouring rain to wash away.
"Regrouping?" Spike says, the uncertainty in his voice making it a question, and Illyria says, "No. They are gone."
"To leave an enemy defeated and alive," she says later. "A terrible thing. They did not deem us worthy of death in battle."
"You feel like falling on your sword, don't let us stop you."
"Spike," Angel snaps. "I can hear rats down in the basement. Go eat something."
"Was gonna do that anyway," he says, limping from the room.
But without Spike's swagger and noise to fill the empty spaces there's just him and Illyria. Her hair's too caked with dirt to see any blue. If it wasn't for the lack of scent, the hard stare that goes through him, he could mistake her for Fred.
She hasn't told him yet how Wes died. He can't ask, not yet. He thinks of Doyle haloed by the light from the beacon. Darla bringing down the stake. Cordelia asleep in a hospital bed. A different bed, Fred smiling bravely at them, trusting them to save her. Gunn fighting until the last moment, not letting Spike hold him up even when he could hardly lift a sword.
His last memory of Wesley is of his friend alive, and he's not ready for that to change.
Illyria says, "Why do you surround yourself with humans?" He waits for a diatribe on human fallibility and weakness, but she looks subdued, cradling her injured arm. She keeps touching the wound there. Holding her fingers up to look at the blood. "They live only a short time. Barely more than mayflies, born and gone."
"Maybe that's the point," Angel says.
He knew Fred almost three years, Gunn for four, Cordelia and Wesley five - more, counting Sunnydale, but he barely noticed them then. Doyle, less than four months. Moments. Lifetimes.
Angel closes his eyes.
"Illyria," he says. "Tell me how Wes died."
**
Takes him an hour to catch one skinny rat, and he has it dry in two seconds. Rests a bit, till his legs can support him, and then he brings down three of the little sods. Fat ones, too, only the best down here in the warehouse district.
He eats two of them and hesitates, pretending to himself that he's had his fill before he sets the last one aside to take upstairs for Angel. Couple of mouthfuls, but better than nothing. 'Specially when they're trying to heal up for another go round.
The thought makes him pause; that's what they're doing, isn't it? Easier to think about this as recuperation and not retirement. Illyria's bollocks aside, the Black Thorn wouldn't just let them go.
A bundle of teeth and fur streaks past him and his mind's already made the leap from rats to mice to cats. Playing with rodents, letting them go, pouncing again - or getting bored and finding something better to play with.
No, he thinks, people died for this, Percy and Charlie and, God, Fred. Angel said it wouldn't make a difference and that it was just for that one second when the cat would sit up and notice the squeaking thing underneath its paw, but he'd put it down to Angel's usual brooding tendencies. Not like he thought they were bound to win - no fun at all in fighting if they were - but he thought they'd had a chance. What was the point, if they never had a chance?
The dust down here's an inch thick but he sits anyway, too filthy already to care. He can feel sunrise approaching outside and he's trying to remember the time difference between Los Angeles and Italy, whether Buffy's patrolling or picking Dawn up from school or slipping into bed with the fucking Immortal. He suddenly misses her, needs her, like he hasn't since he died in that cave - maybe since before that - but she's a continent and god knows how many hours away, and he stays by himself in the dark until the feeling passes and he can move again.
**
Illyria dreams.
In the dream she frowns at her surroundings, perplexed. She was unaware of having fallen asleep, but even a surface scan of her own brain reveals delta waves.
Illyria has never slept. The waking death of the Deeper Well was different. Trapped in her body, this is far more claustrophobic. "This is unacceptable," she says aloud. "I will awaken now."
Her dream-world no more obeys her than the waking one.
She is in a room of glass cases. Stuffed animals and statues regard her with dead eyes. And in the centre of the room, cordoned off by ropes, is her sarcophagus. And sitting on the lid, herself.
The shell, she quickly corrects herself.
"This is a memory of yours," she says. "I was never interred in one of the humans' museums. My wrath at such an insult would have been terrible and all-consuming."
"It's a dream, silly," the shell says, wrinkling her nose in a smile.
"I wish to leave this place."
Winifred Burkle jumps to the ground, over the ropes, and holds out her hands. This is only a dream, so Illyria permits the touch.
The museum leads to a laboratory. This seems immensely logical.
"This is how we're gonna bring Wesley back," Winifred Burkle tells her, beckoning her to a microscope. "Look; we divide time and divide it and divide it again until it gets so small that… oh."
"What?" Illyria demands.
"Planck time," she says sadly. "Ten-to-the-power-of-negative-forty-four. Can't go smaller. Can't go back."
"You are wrong."
"Can't argue with physics." She is disappearing, fading from the ground up. Illyria divides time, divides it, divides it again, but still can't reach her before she vanishes.
**
Eve still has some friends in Los Angeles. The second-to-last favour she pulls in gets her news of what happened to Lindsey. Her very last friend in the city gets her a flight to Italy, economy class.
On the plane, she tries to cry for Lindsey, because she's human now and that's what humans do, but pain goes so deep inside her that she can't find an end to it, and the tears won't come. She doesn't sleep. She watches the ocean from her window seat and is numbly impressed by its size.
It takes her most of the day to find the address she's looking for. She wants to sleep, or cry, but she can't do either.
"His Benevolence The Immortal will be away on business until sundown," the housekeeper tells her, kindly concern in the lilting voice. "Can you return, or would you rather stay?"
Exhausted, Eve whispers that she'll wait, please, if it's all right.
Rome has changed; she remembers it as it was, before the Empire fell, before it was born. She - or one of the other liaisons - attempted negotiations with the Immortal in this same garden.
"The city's falling into chaos," she said, tracing the long shadow on the sundial; it was midwinter, and the day's twelve hours were short. "With our help, you could be Patrician."
"And all you would ask is my soul?" He laughed. "Forgive me, but your offer is… entertaining." He took her hand, his eyes intent and wise. She might have been in love with him. "Gaius Caesar's armies stand on the banks of the Rubicon. In ten days they will cross it, and march on Rome. All of history will be altered, and the Wolf, Ram and Hart content themselves with petty disputes."
It never occurred to her to doubt him. She had never before considered that her employers, her creators, could be flawed - it was something of a turning point, even if it would take a few millennia to realize it. "How can you know what's going to happen?"
And he told her (if she was her, then), she's sure, but the Partners made her human and her memories are trickling away, and the harder she tries to hold them, the faster they fall.
Title: Clock Hands in a Bar Mirror
Author: Doyle
Pairing: mentions of Buffy/Spike and Eve/Lindsey
Rating: PG-13
Notes:
ladyanne04 wanted Angel, Spike and Illyria: 'I'd like to see them get out of that alley alive and then the emotional aftermath when the adrenaline dies away.' Rejected title for this was Five Things About Time (rejected since with the Nina one refusing to work there are only four).**
Some of it feels like a dream, the way he wishespretends that everything he felt before the soul was a dream. The fight itself is a paradox, lasting eternity and lasting a second. He thinks of the hell that he used to reassure Cordy and Wes he didn't really remember. Time was like that there, forever and nothing, and he wishes he still had somebody who needed him to tell comforting lies.
He doesn't wake up until the demons vanish, disappearing back into the shadows and leaving them in the alley, covered in too much blood and mire for the pouring rain to wash away.
"Regrouping?" Spike says, the uncertainty in his voice making it a question, and Illyria says, "No. They are gone."
"To leave an enemy defeated and alive," she says later. "A terrible thing. They did not deem us worthy of death in battle."
"You feel like falling on your sword, don't let us stop you."
"Spike," Angel snaps. "I can hear rats down in the basement. Go eat something."
"Was gonna do that anyway," he says, limping from the room.
But without Spike's swagger and noise to fill the empty spaces there's just him and Illyria. Her hair's too caked with dirt to see any blue. If it wasn't for the lack of scent, the hard stare that goes through him, he could mistake her for Fred.
She hasn't told him yet how Wes died. He can't ask, not yet. He thinks of Doyle haloed by the light from the beacon. Darla bringing down the stake. Cordelia asleep in a hospital bed. A different bed, Fred smiling bravely at them, trusting them to save her. Gunn fighting until the last moment, not letting Spike hold him up even when he could hardly lift a sword.
His last memory of Wesley is of his friend alive, and he's not ready for that to change.
Illyria says, "Why do you surround yourself with humans?" He waits for a diatribe on human fallibility and weakness, but she looks subdued, cradling her injured arm. She keeps touching the wound there. Holding her fingers up to look at the blood. "They live only a short time. Barely more than mayflies, born and gone."
"Maybe that's the point," Angel says.
He knew Fred almost three years, Gunn for four, Cordelia and Wesley five - more, counting Sunnydale, but he barely noticed them then. Doyle, less than four months. Moments. Lifetimes.
Angel closes his eyes.
"Illyria," he says. "Tell me how Wes died."
**
Takes him an hour to catch one skinny rat, and he has it dry in two seconds. Rests a bit, till his legs can support him, and then he brings down three of the little sods. Fat ones, too, only the best down here in the warehouse district.
He eats two of them and hesitates, pretending to himself that he's had his fill before he sets the last one aside to take upstairs for Angel. Couple of mouthfuls, but better than nothing. 'Specially when they're trying to heal up for another go round.
The thought makes him pause; that's what they're doing, isn't it? Easier to think about this as recuperation and not retirement. Illyria's bollocks aside, the Black Thorn wouldn't just let them go.
A bundle of teeth and fur streaks past him and his mind's already made the leap from rats to mice to cats. Playing with rodents, letting them go, pouncing again - or getting bored and finding something better to play with.
No, he thinks, people died for this, Percy and Charlie and, God, Fred. Angel said it wouldn't make a difference and that it was just for that one second when the cat would sit up and notice the squeaking thing underneath its paw, but he'd put it down to Angel's usual brooding tendencies. Not like he thought they were bound to win - no fun at all in fighting if they were - but he thought they'd had a chance. What was the point, if they never had a chance?
The dust down here's an inch thick but he sits anyway, too filthy already to care. He can feel sunrise approaching outside and he's trying to remember the time difference between Los Angeles and Italy, whether Buffy's patrolling or picking Dawn up from school or slipping into bed with the fucking Immortal. He suddenly misses her, needs her, like he hasn't since he died in that cave - maybe since before that - but she's a continent and god knows how many hours away, and he stays by himself in the dark until the feeling passes and he can move again.
**
Illyria dreams.
In the dream she frowns at her surroundings, perplexed. She was unaware of having fallen asleep, but even a surface scan of her own brain reveals delta waves.
Illyria has never slept. The waking death of the Deeper Well was different. Trapped in her body, this is far more claustrophobic. "This is unacceptable," she says aloud. "I will awaken now."
Her dream-world no more obeys her than the waking one.
She is in a room of glass cases. Stuffed animals and statues regard her with dead eyes. And in the centre of the room, cordoned off by ropes, is her sarcophagus. And sitting on the lid, herself.
The shell, she quickly corrects herself.
"This is a memory of yours," she says. "I was never interred in one of the humans' museums. My wrath at such an insult would have been terrible and all-consuming."
"It's a dream, silly," the shell says, wrinkling her nose in a smile.
"I wish to leave this place."
Winifred Burkle jumps to the ground, over the ropes, and holds out her hands. This is only a dream, so Illyria permits the touch.
The museum leads to a laboratory. This seems immensely logical.
"This is how we're gonna bring Wesley back," Winifred Burkle tells her, beckoning her to a microscope. "Look; we divide time and divide it and divide it again until it gets so small that… oh."
"What?" Illyria demands.
"Planck time," she says sadly. "Ten-to-the-power-of-negative-forty-four. Can't go smaller. Can't go back."
"You are wrong."
"Can't argue with physics." She is disappearing, fading from the ground up. Illyria divides time, divides it, divides it again, but still can't reach her before she vanishes.
**
Eve still has some friends in Los Angeles. The second-to-last favour she pulls in gets her news of what happened to Lindsey. Her very last friend in the city gets her a flight to Italy, economy class.
On the plane, she tries to cry for Lindsey, because she's human now and that's what humans do, but pain goes so deep inside her that she can't find an end to it, and the tears won't come. She doesn't sleep. She watches the ocean from her window seat and is numbly impressed by its size.
It takes her most of the day to find the address she's looking for. She wants to sleep, or cry, but she can't do either.
"His Benevolence The Immortal will be away on business until sundown," the housekeeper tells her, kindly concern in the lilting voice. "Can you return, or would you rather stay?"
Exhausted, Eve whispers that she'll wait, please, if it's all right.
Rome has changed; she remembers it as it was, before the Empire fell, before it was born. She - or one of the other liaisons - attempted negotiations with the Immortal in this same garden.
"The city's falling into chaos," she said, tracing the long shadow on the sundial; it was midwinter, and the day's twelve hours were short. "With our help, you could be Patrician."
"And all you would ask is my soul?" He laughed. "Forgive me, but your offer is… entertaining." He took her hand, his eyes intent and wise. She might have been in love with him. "Gaius Caesar's armies stand on the banks of the Rubicon. In ten days they will cross it, and march on Rome. All of history will be altered, and the Wolf, Ram and Hart content themselves with petty disputes."
It never occurred to her to doubt him. She had never before considered that her employers, her creators, could be flawed - it was something of a turning point, even if it would take a few millennia to realize it. "How can you know what's going to happen?"
And he told her (if she was her, then), she's sure, but the Partners made her human and her memories are trickling away, and the harder she tries to hold them, the faster they fall.